The Footsteps At The Lock - Ronald A. Knox

THE FOOTSTEPS
AT THE LOCK

BY

RONALD A. KNOX

•r . i

FOURTH EDITION

4

METHUEN & GO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.G

LONDON

- , ,3

4'

• i - .

First Published .... April izth 1928

Second and Cheaper Editiotx . . July 1929

Third Edition (Cheap Form) . . Apnl 193*

Fourth Edition (Cheap Form) . 19 33

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

TO

DAVID

IN MEMORY OF THE TJNCAS

d C c v

5557

k 1* F

I

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I

Two Cousins. ....

i

II

Shipcote Lock ....

14

III

The Canoe Adrift.

23

IV

The Indescribable has its Doubts

3 2

V

Mr. Burgess Expands .

42

VI

The Archimedes Touch

• 54

VII

The Camera Cannot Lie

64

VIII

A Common-room Dinner .

7^

IX

Nigel Goes Down ....

• 83

X

Discordant Notes ....

XI

Mr. Erasmus Quirk

. 105

XII

The Secret of the Island .

V T TT

All!

Pursued

• 125

XIV

The Man in the Punt .

• 134

XV

A New Legacy ....

. 144
• 153

XVI

Bredon Plays Patience

XVII

Mr. Quirk Disappears .

. 163

XVIII

In Undisguise ....

. 172
. 181

XIX

The Story Nigel Told .

XX

A Reconstruction

• 193

• 203

XXI

A Walk in the Dark .

• •

Vl\

viii THE FOOTSTEPS. AT THE LOCK

CHAP. ; \ \ K PAGE

XXII Another Story . . . .212

XXIII Bredon Plays Patience Again . 221 •

XXIV Backed Both Ways . . . .231

XXV A Postscript 242

'LA! X

•

THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE

LOCK

CHAPTER I
TWO COUSINS

IT is an undeniable but a mystifying fact of
natural ethics that a man has the right to
dispose of his own property at death. They
can do him no good now, those ancestral acres,
those hard-won thousands, nor may any of the
trees he planted, save the grim cypress, follow
their ephemeral master ; yet, before the partnership
of hand and mind is altogether dissolved, a brief
flourish at the tail of a will may endow a pauper
or disinherit a spendthrift, may be frittered away
in the service of a hundred useless or eccentric
ends. No good to him— at least, there was once a
theory that a man might be happier in the after state
for the use of his means here, but we have abolished
all that long since ; no good to him, but much to
expectant nephews and nieces, much to life-bxit
iiinds and cats' homes, much to the Exchequer,
wilting for lack of death-duties. Of all this he is
he arbiter. Yet we have it on the authority of all
the copy-books that money does far more harm in
the world than good ; why, then, do we leave the

1

THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

direction of that harm to the one man who, ex
hypothesi, will be out of the way when it happens ?
Why let the testator arrange for the unworthy
squandering of his property, when he is to have
no tenure in it henceforward except the inalienable

grave ?

Such doubts, entirely methodical in character,
are suggested by the last will and testament of
Sir John Burtell, a barrister of some note in his
day, that is, in the latter years of Queen Victoria.
A safe man, with no itch for politics or ambition for
titles, he retired soon after the death of the Great
Queen, leaving the world open to his two sons,
John and Charles, then in the flower of their age.
He came of a sound stock, and found, besides, some
zest in country pursuits ; nor, in the end, was it
years that carried him off, but the severe influenza
epidemic of 1918. By that time, his two sons had
predeceased him. Both took their commissions in
1 91 5 ; both were killed two years later. John's
wife had died long since, Charles' widow alienated
the old man's sympathies by marrying again and
settling in the United States. His will, therefore,
on which this story turns, left the bulk of his pro-
perty, some fifty thousand pounds, to his elder
grandson Derek ; in the event of his death it was
to revert to Charles' son Nigel.

So far, you might have thought the old gentleman
would cheat the lawyers and die intestate. But
certain conditions attached to the will made it a
document of importance. The testator reflected
that one child was an orphan, the other fatherless
and as good as motherless ; that they had to grow

TWO COUSINS

3

to manhood with no parental supervision in times
of great unsettlement. Very wisely, then, he left the
fifty thousand (which was not the whole, but the
bulk of the legacy) in trust, until such time as
Derek (or, failing him, Nigel) should reach the age
of twenty-five. Meanwhile, the boys were rare
visitors to their grandfather's house, and scarcely
welcome ones ; a kind of precocious boredom in
their manner exasperated the old gentleman, none
the less bitterly because it was assumed to be typical
of a period. The avital thunders about politics,
art, morals and religion may be supposed to have
formed the grandsons' character by repulsion.
Derek lived, mostly, with old friends of the family
in the South of France, who let him run wild on the
facile excuse that ' anyhow, the boy will have
money'. Nigel, who never took to his step-
relations, was little better handled ; an exile when
at home, an unappreciated rebel at school, he flung
himself, with a pathetic illusion of originality, into
the career of an aesthete.

The two cousins met little, whether before or
after their grandfather's death ; there was little
in the character of either to make it desirable
They went to different schools, neither of which
(since schools have a reputation to lose) I intend to
specify But Oxford, though her critics have been
unkindly of late, has too broad a back to need the
shelter of anonymity ; both matriculated at the
older University, both at Simon Magus College.
E ection t0 C o U eges is a mystery, as election should
be but the two years which Derek had misspent
there might surely have warned the fellows against

4 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

risking a second experiment with Nigel. On the
other hand, Derek was a normal creature, though
morose in disposition, idiotically extravagant, and
with a strict periodicity of drunkenness. There
was nothing in him, it must be admitted, which
gave promise of Nigel's unendurable affectations.

Derek was dissolute with a kind of lumpish
unimaginativeness which may infect youth in any
century. If he gambled to excess, it was because
nobody had succeeded in introducing him to any
other method by which you could kill time until the
age of twenty-five. If he drank, it was with the
stupid man's haste to forget and to disguise his own
dullness. His dress, his manner, his associates
were of the equestrian world ; but his taste was
neither for horses nor for horsemanship, only for
horsiness. With the Dean he was continually
in conflict ; but there was a regularity in his irregu-
larities, you knew beforehand just when he would
be drunk, and just how drunk he would be ; and
there is that in the academic mind which appreciates
consistency in whatever direction. He was not
clever enough to devise organized mischief ; he was
too indolent (it seemed) to bear malice ; he accepted
his fines, his gatings, and a couple of rustications
with the complacency of the school-boy who (in
the language of his terminal report) ' takes punish-
ment well '. He made little stir in the University
world, and it is probable that during the whole
period of his residence he never had an enemy,
except his cousin.

Nigel's perceptions were infinitely more acute,
his faults infinitely less excusable. He had grown

TWO COUSINS

5

up in the aftermath of war, under the infection of
disillusionment. He looked out upon a world of
men (school-masters especially) who had fought
and bled for the sake of certain sample emotions,
with a submerged jealousy which took the form of
resentment. These others had had the opportunity
which was denied to him, of exploiting the full
possibilities of manhood ; he would console himself
for the loss by denying that the opportunity was
worth having. They had been born to set the
world right ; he would retaliate on the cursed spite
of his late nativity by doing his best to put the
world out of joint again. He would rebel against
everything his neighbours bowed down to ; would
embrace every form of revolt, however tawdry,
however 'trite ; he would have no aim or ideal
except to shock. At school, he had the sense to
keep his powder dry, to lock up his splenetic poems,
to revenge himself upon his uncongenial surroundings
by the secret satisfaction of an undivulged irony.
'Loony Burtell' they called him; and he was
content, like another Brutus, to bide his time.

Among all her immemorial traditions, Oxford
cherishes none staler than that of aestheticism. A
small group in each generation lights upon the same
old recipe for setting the Isis on fire, and (since
undergraduate memory only lives three years) is
satisfied that it is a group of lonely pioneers Nigel

frlTt W ^ C ^ SCh °° 1; he pilla S ed Wa«is
rom Saki without appreciating that ironic reserva-
tion which is his charm. He offered absinthe to all
^ visitors, usually explaining that he did not really
care for it, but kept it in his rooms in order to P u^

6 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

temptation in the way of his scout. He painted
his walls a light mauve, and hung them with a
few squares of blank cartridge paper on which he
was always threatening to do crayon drawings ;
the beauty of art, he said, lay in its promise — its
fulfilment only brought disillusion. He talked in
a very slow drawl, with a lisp and a slight stammer
which he had cultivated to perfection. He never
attended lectures ; the dons did not understand,
he complained, that undergraduates come up to
Oxford in order to teach. He was desperately
callow, and quite inordinately conceited.

The older Universities tolerate everything. There
are times, and there are Colleges, at which the
essential rowdyism of youth clothes itself in a mantle
of righteous Philistine indignation, and breaks up the
aesthetic group with circumstances of violence.
But you can fool some of the people some of the
time ; and at Simon Magus men cared little what
their neighbours did, short of the bagpipes. Nigel
found disciples, or at least comrades-in-arms for
his movement, in that home of impossible unbeliefs.
If you were the kind of person who liked that kind
of thing, that was the kind of thing you liked. A
round dozen of half-literary, half-histrionic young
men from various colleges frequented his rooms,
debated on the cut of clothes, and read out their
compositions to each other. They spoke of them-
selves, almost reverently, as 'the men who had
made bad ' ; they declared it their mission to
encourage immorality amongst the undergraduates,
Bolshevism amongst the scouts, and suicide amongst
the dons. It was their favourite creed that England,

TWO COUSINS

7

and indeed all the English-speaking races, were the
spoke in the world's wheel. ' Why should I admire
the country I was born in ? ' expostulated Nigel ;
and indeed the reason alleged seemed inadequate.
His favourite method of denunciation was to say,
' I don't like it ; it's unforeign '.

It will easily be imagined that little sympathy
was wasted between the two cousins. Not, indeed,
that the desperate poses of the younger could affect
the elder with any sense of personal concern. Oxford
is a broad stream, in which the varied regatta of life
can be managed without jostling. Derek himself
was too listless to condemn any form of behaviour ;
and his friends, though they agreed among them-
selves that Nigel was the kind of thing which wasn't
done, never dreamed of holding his cousin respon-
sible for him. But the arrival of a namesake in the
same college is never welcome ; your letters go
astray, well-meaning people mix you up, and send
invitations to the wrong man. The two were,
moreover, somewhat alike; the male strain was
strong in the Burtell family, and a resemblance had
survived closer than is usual between cousins.
Each was dark and rather short; either in a
general way, insipidly good-looking ; each 'had a
pink-and-white complexion. It irritated Derek to
be addressed, sometimes, as if he were Nigel's
brother ; it irritated him still more when Nigel's

* Cqi f ntances him at a distance and
saluted him by mistake. He ostentatiously avoided

5nn 0 s US name ^ " M * m,ght ' the mention
Nigel, on his part, was not slow to appreciate

8 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

this neglect in the attitude of his senior, or to devise
means of retaliation. He identified his cousin as a
centaur, and referred to him sadly as a kind of
family failing. All the forms of abstinence he dis-
played were dictated to him by this repulsion.
' I can't get drunk,' he would say ; ' people would
be certain to mistake me for the Centaur, and I
might be too drunk to explain.' ' No, I don't play
cards ; there is such an intolerable look of Vic-
torian virtue about the Queen of Spades ; it would
be dreadful to sit opposite her night after night.
Besides, the Centaur plays cards.' ' I am really
going to work this term ; then even the Master's
wife will hardly be able to mistake me for the Cen-
taur again.' They say the University is a micro-
cosm, and it is certainly a microphone ; remarks
like these, not always conceived in the best of taste,
came round to Derek, and fanned, from time to time,
the dull embers of his resentment.

After a year of this, Derek went down ; but the
feud did not stop there. Nigel spent his vacations
in London ; and London is even a worse place than
Oxford for avoiding your dislikes. Kind, but imper-
ceptive hostesses threw the two cousins together,
Neither had scaled any particular social heights,
but each straddled on that uneasy ridge which
connects Chelsea with Mayfair. Derek, conscious
of his own conversational limitations, was for ever
being reminded of his cousin's existence. ' Oh yes,
charming fellow ; but have you met Nigel ? '
' Do tell me, Mr. Burtell, what is your brilliant
cousin Nigel doing now ? ' These hollow insipidities
of conversation were whip-lashes to Derek's self-

TWO COUSINS

9

esteem. But there was worse behind it. In cer-
tain subterraneous walks of London society, both
cousins were well known ; and in that world, care-
less of principle and greedy of originality, Nigel
shone, a precocious proficient. Without heart,
without worth, he dazzled feminine eyes with his
reputed accomplishments. There was a woman who
committed suicide ; she was a drug-fiend, and
nothing was published in the papers ; but there
were those, and Derek was among them, who
believed that Nigel's callousness had been the cause
of the tragedy.

Meanwhile, Nigel was running his course at Ox-
ford : he celebrated his twenty-first birthday by a
kind of mock funeral, at which he lay, in ghastly
splendour, on a black catafalque, while his friends
stood over him and drank absinthe to the memory
of his departed youth. Derek was more than two
years his senior ; was in measurable distance,
therefore, of his promised inheritance ; and others
besides the solicitors began to speculate as to the
ultimate destination of the fifty thousand pounds.
Derek's Oxford bills were still largely unpaid'
meanwhile, he lived recklessly beyond his modest
income, secure in the consciousness of the fortune
that awaited him. He ran up bills in London ; and,
when these new creditors proved more importunate
than the old, he applied for financial help to strangers,
less Gentile than genteel. More than one promoter
ot private loans found an excellent business opening
in a young m an who was no longer a minor, and
who had less than two years to wait before he was
assured of a substantial capital sum. So things

io THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

went on, with cordial feelings on both sides, until a
faint tremor of apprehension fell upon the creditors'
hearts. The loans were being piled up in a reckless
way ; already the fifty thousand was almost swal-
lowed up ; and Derek, as if conscious that the
future had no longer any competence to offer him,
was ruining his health in a way which suggested
that he would not long survive the accession to his
forestalled inheritance. His drinking bouts were
now almost continual ; rumour whispered that he
also drugged. Whether he lived beyond the age
of twenty-five was a matter of total indifference
to society at large. That he should live until
he was twenty-five was the earnest prayer of a
handful of gentlemen not addicted to the practices
of religion. If Derek should die before his twenty-
fifth birthday, the fifty thousand would go to
Nigel, and the money-lenders would have no assets
to satisfy their claims. Panic-stricken, they came
together, and met Derek's further appeals for
accommodation with a peremptory stipulation that
he should insure his life.

With discreet hesitations, a well-known Insur-
ance Company declined to take the risk. Their
doctor, with raised eyebrows, protested that he had
never seen so young a constitution so seriously
undermined. If Mr. Burtell took care of himself,
he had no doubt a reasonable chance of achieving
his twenty-fifth birthday, but ... to tell the
truth, he was not fully satisfied either of Mr. Bur-
t ell's will to do so, or of his power, if he had the
will, to break with his bad habits. ' With a chap
like Derek,' commented Nigel, to whom the cir-

TWO COUSINS

ii

cumstances were reported, ' the world wants to be
insured against his life rather than his death.'
But there is a way out of every impasse, and usually
it is the Indescribable. In case the reader is not
already acquainted with the name and the character
of this vast insurance agency, let him recall the
name of that millionaire who recently flew to Nova
Zembla, paying as he did so a shilling per second
by way of insurance money. . . . Yes, that was the
Indescribable. Human ingenuity has still failed to
imagine any form or any degree of danger which the
Indescribable are not prepared (for a consideration)
to underwrite. The fact that Derek Burtell was not
legitimate business made no difference to them.
For a very reasonable premium they backed him to
reach the age of twenty-five, without showing any
curiosity as to his further destiny.

One condition, however, they did make — even
the Indescribable makes conditions. Mr. Burtell
must really put himself under the direction of a
medical adviser. . . . No, unfortunately it would
not be possible for their own doctor to undertake
the task. (It is a matter of honour, and indeed of
income, with the Indescribable's doctor to refuse
every other form of practice.) But if Mr. Burtell
had no objection, they would like to see him put
himself in the hands of Dr. Simmonds, a man in
whom he could have every confidence, a man, indeed,
who had made a life-long study of acrasia. So it
was that, when he was within a month or so of his
all-important twenty-fifth birthday, and when his
cousin was just preparing, without any notable
regrets on either side, to take his degree and go

12 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

down from Oxford, Derek found himself closeted
in Dr. Simmonds' consulting-room in Wigpole
Street.

' Open air, that's what you want/ Dr. Simmonds
was saying. ' Open air. Take your mind off the
need for stimulants, and set you up again physically.
See ? *

' I suppose you want me to take a confounded
sea- voyage,' grumbled Derek. ' You fellows always
seem to want to send a man to the ends of the
earth, in the hope that he'll be dead before he comes
back.'

Dr. Simmonds shuddered. He was not exactly
an official of the Indescribable Company, but he
was (how shall we say it ?) in close touch with
them ; and the idea of such a valuable life, with
such a short time to run, being exposed to the
chances of wind and wave .did not impress him
favourably.

' Why no, not a sea-voyage. Take a sea-voyage,
and the first thing you know you'll find you're
edging round to the saloon. Don't mind my
speaking frankly, do you ? No, it must be open air
combined with exercise ; not very hard exercise,
you ain't fit for it, but something that'll keep you
occupied, see ? The river, now ; ever go on the
river ? '

' I went to Henley once with some fellows.'

' Well, look here, I'll tell you what. You hire a
boat ; better say a canoe ; don't want to take any
risks with that heart of yours, you know; you
go down to Oxford and take a friend with you, and
up you go to Lechlade, Cricklade, as far as you can

TWO COUSINS

13

go without the canoe getting aground. Take it
pretty easy, mind, but keep on the go the whole
time as far as possible. Then you come back to
me, and I'll recommend you some exercises and a
diet, and we'll see what we can make of you.'

It was something of a surprise to Derek's world to
hear that he was indulging in anything so innocuous
as a canoe trip up the river. It was still more of a
surprise to them when they heard the company he
was keeping ; the other place in the canoe was
actually to be occupied by Nigel. And yet there
was sense in the arrangement ; Nigel had to kill
time between his schools and his viva voce ; Nigel
was at Oxford, and knew how to manage canoes and
where you hired the beastly things ; besides, there
was a great-aunt in the background, who had
expressed a particular wish to see the two boys
getting on better together, and, though neither
had seen her for a long time, Aunt Alma's circum-
stances were supposed to be comfortable, and she
had no other legal heir. As for Nigel, he assured
his friends that the prospect of a centaur turned
hippopotamus was altogether too much for him.
It would be interesting to make a tour of rural
England, and satisfy himself that the churches
were really as depopulated as he had been led to
believe. And then, whatever you said against
nvers, at least you had to admit that they set an
example of decadence.

CHAPTER II

SHIPCOTE LOCK

THE morning sun shone on the upper reaches
of the Thames with the hazy glow that
recalls a night of rain and presages a day
of baking heat. It was early July, and the time of
day conspired with the season of the year to pro-
duce an impression of almost uncanny perfection.
The woods that threw out their flanking battalions
towards the stream were heavy with consummated
leafage ; the hay standing in the fields glistened
and steamed with the evaporations of yesterday ;
the larks sang in the unconscious egotism of their
perpetual encore ; the hedges were still fresh with
the year's last revelation, the dog-rose ; white
wreaths of cloud sailed lazily across the distance,
as if assured that they had no speaking part to-
day. The cows stood whisking their tails gently,
reserving themselves for greater efforts in the com-
ing heat ; rabbits sunned themselves among the
hillocks, and scuttled away, stricken with imaginary
fears ; school-children dotted the lanes, their heads
together in earnest debate over nothing ; the air
was full of promise and expectation ; a wind blew,
steady but with no chill, from the south-west.

And through this world of loveliness the river
flowed, a secret world of its own. Lower down, the

14

SHIPCOTE LOCK 15

Thames mingles with the haunts and the activities
of men ; overgrown towns straggle along its borders,
Maidenhead, Reading, Henley, Wallingford Abing-
don. But here, in these upper waters, it is divorced
from the companionship of human life ; the villages
stand to one side and let it pass, turning their backs
on it contemptuously at half a mile's distance ; nor
is there any spot between Oxford and Lechlade at
which a cluster of human habitations fringes the
river's banks, and owes its conformation to the
neighbourhood. Unexpectedly it glides at your
feet, in the middle of smiling hayftelds or at the
corner of a country lane ; it has a traffic and a life
of its own. Cushioned upon its waters, in punt or
canoe, you see nothing but high banks on each side,
deep in willow-herb and loose-strife, in meadow-
sweet and deadly nightshade ; or a curtain of wil-
lows cuts off the landscape from you ; or deep beds
of reeds stand up like forests between you and the
sky-horizon. To meet haymakers in a field, to
pass under one of the rare, purposeless iron bridges,
makes you feel as if you had intersected an alto-
gether different plane of life. Your fellow-citizens
are the fishermen, incorrigible optimists who line
the banks at odd intervals ; the encampments of
boy scouts, mudlarking in the shallows or sunning
themselves naked on the bank ; your stages are the
locks, your landscape the glassy surface and the
tugging eddies of the stream.

And the river, by virtue of its isolation, has its
own sanctuary of wild life. It recks nothing of the
road, a few hundreds of yards distant, where school-
boys throw stones after rabbits and ransack the

16 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

hedgerows for nests. Here, in this lucid interval
between two continents of human noise and labour,
reigns no fear of the intruder Man. Frail and
occasional visitors, the river-craft do not interrupt
the solitude ; they become, themselves, a part of
the landscape, \nd Nature accepts them, uncon-
cerned. The heron leaves his lonely stance only at a
minute's warning ; the kingfisher flies your approach
without consternation, as if protected by natural
mimicry against its background of blue sky ; fishes
plop out of the water almost within reach of your
hand, a sudden explosion amidst the silence ; water-
hens bob to and fro on the surface, waiting till
you are close by before they will show you their
hydroplane and submarine tactics ; the voles race
you along the bank, or let your prows cut through
their wake; the dragon-flies provide an aerial
escort, and flutter temptingly in the van. You
are initiated, for once, into the craft of Nature's
freemasonry; the highway you are following is
older than the Romans, and you are not reckoned
with the profane.

It would be impossible to imagine two human
beings less alive to these considerations than the
Burtell cousins, as they made their return journey
downstream. Neither Derek's cast of mind nor his
education had predisposed him to feel or to inter-
pret the impressions made by natural scenery.
He lay now extended along trie floor of the canoe,
a dead-weight amidships, the back of his head just
kept erect by the little rest that leaned against the
centre thwart, his eyes and face shaded by a brown
Homburg hat, tilted extravagantly forward. Nigel,

SHIPCOTE LOCK *7

though better placed as a spectator, had equally
little appreciation to spare for the scene. In hot
weather it was his principle to spend his Urne in
towns, where the sight of your ^ow-mortals hard
at work, sweating on scaffoldings or huddled together
on omnibuses, gave you an agreeable sense of cool-
ness. The effects of summer were always inartistic ;
Nature overcrowded the canvas, Like a good artist
who had struck on a bad period. He had no eyes,
then, for his surroundings ; his own appearance, as
he sat paddling in the stern, was sufficiently incon-
gruous. As one who must always be acting a part,
he had dressed up very carefully as a ' river-man ' ;
' the Jerome K. Jerome touch ', he had explained,
1 is what impresses the lock-keepers '. This robust
attire was in strange contrast to the delicately-
complexioned face that looked out from it, and the
long black hair brushed elaborately backwards.
A passer-by in a solitary punt, shading his eyes as he
watched the pair vanish downstream, might have
been pardoned for wondering at the vision.

The blurred roar of a waterfall, and a bifurcation
of the stream with a danger-notice on the right-
hand branch, heralded the approach of a lock.
Shipcote Lock is not a mere precaution against
floods ; it is also a short-cut. The channel that
flows through it is dead straight for nearly a mile,
and only at the end of this is it rejoined, after
unnecessary windings, by the weir-stream. Lock
and weir are both at the higher end of their respec-
tive channels, and behind them, to right of the one
and left of the other, stretches a considerable
island, the further part of which is woody and uncul-

18 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

tivated. A narrow plank bridge, thrown across
the weir itself, renders the island accessible from the
right ; you can pass over the other branch by way
of the lock itself, or (when this is shut up at nights)
by a light iron bridge that crosses the lock-stream
about a hundred yards below. The lock-keeper's
house stands to the left on the mainland ; but of
his garden the greater part covers the upper end of
the island, jutting out like a wedge and washed
by the river on both sides.

If any man has a distaste for the society of his
fellows, and loves work out of doors, and running
water and the companionship of flowers, who could
wish him better than to end his days as a lock-
keeper ? Or rather, to live as a lock-keeper until
he can no longer stoop to wind up the winches, or
strain to open the reluctant gates. In these upper
reaches, only pleasure-boats go by ; and their
brief season is limited by the uncertain whims of
an English summer. For the rest, when he is not
actually plying his trade of outwitting nature, the
lock-keeper can give himself wholly, it seems, to
gardening, assured from the first that his flowers
will grow in ideal surroundings, neighboured by
the pleasant wedding of water with stone. Ship-
cote Lock is among the most ambitious of these
fairy gardens ; its crowded beds of pinks and sweet-
william, stocks and nasturtium, snap-dragon and
Noah's-nightcap, seem to rise out of the water's
edge like a galleon of flowers, with crimson ramblers
for its rigging. Man, you would say, has first done
violence to nature by dividing the stream, damming
up one half and forcing the other into a stone collar ;

SHIPCOTE LOCK 19

and then, adding insult to injury, he has outdared
with this profusion of blooms the paler glories of the

river bank. , , v

'There' (as Homer says of Calypso s garden)
' even an immortal might gaze and wonder as he
approached.' It was not the habit of Nigel Burtell
to gaze in wonder at anything. To flowers, especi-
ally, he had a strong objection, at least when they
grew out of doors. ' They look so painfully natural,
he said, ' like naked savages, you know, all quite
simple and unself conscious. Put them behind the
glass of a green-house, and there is something to be
said for them; those Alidensian garments lend
them a kind of meretricious charm.' It was not,
then, any appreciation of the scene in general that
made him bring out his camera as the boat drew
near the lock. (Photography, he held, was the
highest of all the arts, because the camera never
tells the truth.) What had riveted his attention
was the figure of the lock-keeper himself— a back
view of him unexpectedly halved by the fact that
he was bending double over some gardening opera-
tion. ' Design for an arch,' murmured Nigel to
himself, as he pressed the spring. Then he called
out ' Lock ! ' with sudden violence ; the reproachful
form of the unconscious model straightened itself
and turned to meet them. The man's injured
expression seemed to imply that he was only a
gardener who made a hobby of lock-keeping. But
he turned, whistling, to open the gates.

Owing to the recent passage of the gentleman
in the punt, the lock was at high level. Nigel
paddled in slowly ; and the lock-keeper, not anxious

20 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

to waste time which might be devoted to his darling
geraniums, hastened to the lower end of the lock
and pulled up the sluices, leaving the collection of the
fare till later on. Some incident of life downstream
caught his attention as he stood on the bridge —
your solitary liver is ever prodigal of gazing — and
it was not till the water had well-nigh flowed out
that he went ashore, and took up his familiar stance,
buttressing the further end of the wooden lever.
By that time, Nigel was standing on the bank,
while the canoe, with its remaining occupant, had
disappeared from sight below the level of the
lock wall. A desultory conversation was in pro-
gress, of which the lock-keeper could only hear one
half, like one assisting at a telephone interview ;
the other side of the discussion remained inaudible.

' How long will it take you to get down to Eaton
Bridge ? A couple of hours ? . .

' Well, if you're going to take three hours over it,
you may find me there waiting for you. If the
examiners take me early, and don't show an inde-
cent curiosity about the extent of my knowledge,
I ought to be clear by eleven. Then I could take a !
taxi out and meet you. What's that . . . ? '

' Oh yes, quite a decent sort of pub, it looked.
Wait for me there if you like. But I expect I'll
be there ahead of you. Left to yourself, you will
probably paidle in the burn from morning sun till
dine. Well, so long . .

' What ? Oh, all right, I'll bring it down. I'd
throw it, only you'd never be able to catch it.'

Nigel disappeared for a moment down the steps,
and then came up again to settle with the lock-

SHIPCOTE LOCK

21

keeper 1 No,' he said, ' he won't be coming back.
I'm getting off here to join the railway. Its
slightly quicker in these parts, I understand, than
canoeing. By the way, how do I get to the station ?

If possible, the Englishman always prefaces
direction by correction. ' Want to catch the train,
eh ? Well, you see, what you did ought to have
done was to get off at the bridge. There's a bus
from there goes all the way to the station, to meet
the trains like. Yes, that's what you ought to have
done, get off at the bridge. You'll have to walk
there now, you see.'

' It's not far, is it ? 9

' Well, you see, if you was to go by road, you'd
have to go all the way back to the bridge again ;
that would take you better than an hour, that would.
Your best plan, sir, is to take the field path. You
want to cross the bridge, see, over the weir yonder,
and keep straight on across the field, with the hedge
on your left. You'll see Spinnaker's Farm across
on the left, but don't you take no notice of that,
you keep straight on. Maybe a quarter of an hour's
walk it is, across the fields. Yes, that's your best
way now.'

' You don't happen to know the time of the train,
do you ? There's one somewhere about a quarter
past nine.'

' Nine-fourteen, sir, that's the one you want, if
you're going back Oxford way. Oh yes, you'll
have plenty of time to catch that ; it isn't not hardly
five minutes to nine now.'

' Are you sure ? I make it nine o'clock.'

' Well, your watch is fast, sir, that's what it is.

22 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

I get the time by wireless every night, you see,
so that's how I know. Eight fifty-five, that's all.
Your watch is fast, you see, that's what it is.'

' Trains pretty well up to time, I suppose, on a
branch line like this ? '

' Well, that's what you can't exactly say. Some-
times you wouldn't wish to see a train come in more
prompt than what they do ; sometimes I won't say
but they're a matter of ten minutes or a quarter
of an hour late. Depends on how quick they get
away from the stations, you see, that's how it is.
But if you're going to Oxford, sir, you won't find
you're behind time, not but a minute or two ; the
nine-fourteen wouldn't be later than that, not at
this time in the morning she wouldn't. Thank
you, sir ; very much obliged to you. If you keep
straight along that path, you'll be at the station in
good time, and it isn't much more than half an hour's
run to Oxford from there. Good morning, sir.'

Nigel crossed the lock, threaded his way between
the bright nasturtiums and the Canterbury bells,
and almost before the gate of the weir bridge was
heard swinging to behind him, was out of sight
behind the island and the trees. The lock-keeper
turned his gaze once more downstream. Derek still
lay motionless, with the paddle resting idly on the
thwarts ; wind and stream were enough to drive
the crazy bark at a fair pace through the cutting.
' Well, he ain't in much of a hurry, anyway,' said
the lock-keeper, and went back to weed among the
geraniums.

CHAPTER III

THE CANOE ADRIFT

IN spite of the computations mentioned in the
last chapter, Nigel found himself without a
ticket on Oxford platform. He had to accost
the collector, to be waved back until the collector
had dealt with all the other passengers, and to
undergo the indignity of a personally conducted
tour to the guichet. His digs, however, were in the
High ; his education, incomplete in many respects,
had at least accustomed him to quick changes, and
it was only a minute or two past ten when he
presented himself at the door of the Schools, white-
tied and respectable.
' What are yon, sir ? ' asked the porter.
' History.'

' History viva voce examinations don't start till
to-morrow. Ten o'clock, sir.'

Nigel turned away, hardly with the air of one
disappointed, and retired to his digs. Oxford was
full of all the horrors of a Long Vacation ; earnest
Americans with guide-books, with sketch-books,
with cameras; charabanc-loads of breezy Mid-
landers, losing one another, hailing one another,
i roaring inaudible jokes across the street ; patient
little men who had come up for a summer school
of Undertakers, trying to find their way back to

23

24 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

Keble. There seemed to be no more room than
during term, whether in the perilous streets or on
the thronging pavements; North Oxford went
marketing as relentlessly as ever; shop-assistants
bicycled past, with lady shop-assistants perched
stork-like on their steps ; Cowley Fathers stumped
along, eyes in the distance and cloak on shoulder ;
dons met, dons button-holed each other, dons asked
each other when each other was going down ; only
the undergraduate, for once, was a bird of passage.
A grim notice of ' Apartments to Let ' hung in the
window of Nigel's own sitting-room; a pot of
ferns stood underneath it— no, this was no place
for him. He changed his white tie, hailed a taxi,
and within a quarter of an hour had been deposited
at Eaton Bridge.

The Gudgeon Inn stands close by Eaton Bridge,
with a pleasant though untidy stretch of grass
sloping down to the river; at the end is a tiny
quay to which a few boats are moored, at the back
of it a verandah, where holiday guests can have
their tea in wet weather without actually going
indoors. On the whole, there are worse places in
which to wait for a dilatory cousin. Nigel explained
his movements to the young lady at the bar, and,
after consulting her as to the hour, ordered a large
stone ginger. This, when it was brought out to
him on the lawn, he fortified from a handy flask
in his pocket, and sat down in its company to wait.
It was impossible that Derek should arrive yet ;
on the other hand, it was pretty clear that he
ought to turn up within half an hour or an hour
at most ; his course lay downstream, and he had

THE CANOE ADRIFT 25

a fair wind behind him. There was nothing for it
but to sit here and philosophize. Indeed the slow
swirl of the river at his feet invited to philosophy ;
it chimed in with the mood of a man just coming
down from Oxford, and with no very sensational
achievements, so far, to be put down to his credit.
A large peacock edged suspiciously into view:
Nigel picked up some fragments of bread, doped
them with gin, and threw them at the bird in the
hope that it would become interested. A drunk
peacock would surely be an exquisite sight ; to see
it lose, at last, the shocked staidness of its demea-
nour. A camping party on the other side of the
stream, a little lower down, claimed his attention ;
two brawny young men appeared to be washing
up dishes, and hanging clothes out to dry. Nigel
speculated whether it would ever be possible to
enjoy the kind of life in which you had to wash
up your own dishes and feed on tinned salmon.
There seemed to be people who did it for the love
of the tiling. Probably it was a compensation of
some kind ; you could explain anything as a
compensation nowadays.

Half-past eleven came, and still no sign of the
canoe. Nigel wandered up and down restlessly,
consulting his watch at intervals ; at last he ordered
and consumed a solitary luncheon, of which the
main features were cold mutton and cherry brandy.
At about a quarter to one he decided to wait no
longer ; he approached the barmaid — he was getting
anxious, he explained, about his friend in the canoe.
Die gentleman had been in poor health recently ;
it seemed possible that there might have been an

3

26 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

accident of some sort. Anyhow, he intended to
walk upstream and look for him ; would it be pos-
sible for him to have a companion ? He himself
was not much of a swimmer, and it might be a
good thing to have somebody present who was
more of an expert ; was there anybody connected
with the inn who could come with him ? It appeared
that there was. The odd man would be prepared
for any emergency ; he swam like a duck he did.
Nigel was introduced to the odd man, who turned
out to be a very ordinary man. His engagements
seemed to admit a walk of an hour or so spent in
a good cause. Together they crossed the bridge,
and set out upon the swathe of trodden hay, called
by compliment a tow-path, which runs along the
eastern bank of the river.

The Muse of detective fiction— she must surely
exist by now — has one disadvantage as compared
with her sisters ; she cannot tell a plain unvarnished
tale throughout. If she did, there could be no
mystery, no situation, no denouement ; the omnis-
cience of the author and the omnipresence of the
reader, walking hand in hand, would lay waste the
trail ; no clue would be left undiscovered, no
detail lack its due emphasis. Needs must, then,
that from time to time we should interrupt the
thread of dull historical narration ; should see the
facts not as they were in themselves but as they
presented themselves to those who partook in the
events concerned. Let me give you, then, the
next stage of my story in the form in which it
appeared next morning to a million readers.

THE CANOE ADRIFT

^7

PLEASURE TRIP MYSTERY SEQUEL
CANOE OCCUPANT FEARED DROWNED

O.X FOR D.

Alarm is felt here for the safety of Mr. Derek
Burtell (inset), a visitor from London who should
have returned yesterday from a canoeing tour to
Cricklade. He was last seen at an early hour
yesterday morning, leaving Shipcote Lock, which
is situated in a somewhat lonely part of the river,
about six miles above Eaton Bridge. His cousin,
Mr. Nigel Burtell, who had accompanied him up
to that point, returned from Shipcote to Oxford
by train, it being his intention to rejoin the canoe
at Eaton Bridge, to which he motored out from
Oxford an hour or two later. After a time the
non-arrival of his fellow-traveller gave rise to alarm,
and he proceeded upstream by the tow-path in
the direction of Shipcote, accompanied by George
Lowther, a serving-man at the Gudgeon Inn.

WATER UP TO THE GUNWALE

At about half-past one they sighted the missing
gentleman's hat, which was floating in the centre
of the stream ; and shortly afterwards the canoe
came in view, still afloat but full of water up to
the gunwale. No sign was to be seen of its quondam
occupant. Lowther immediately stripped and swam
out to the canoe, which he brought in J.o shore
without difficulty; then he pluckily commenced
diving near the spot where the canoe had been
found, to see if any further signs of the missing
gentleman were forthcoming. On righting the

28 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

canoe and emptying it on the bank, it was discovered
that a jagged hole of considerable size had been
made in one of the planks of its hull, apparently
by some violent collision with the sharp gravel
which fringes the bank at various neighbouring
points.

HEART FAILURE THEORY

Help was immediately summoned from Shipcote
Lock, from Eaton, and from the village of Byworth,
close to the scene of the accident. Watermen in
punts were at work all yesterday afternoon dragging
the bed of the stream, and search parties explored
the neighbourhood of the banks, in case Mr. Burtell
should have gone ashore and be in need of help.
It is feared, however, that he may have succumbed
to a heart attack, being prone to weakness of that
organ, and fallen overboard through some lurch of
the boat, the damage to its hull being inflicted
subsequently. The river bed is overgrown with
reeds at this point, and the search is necessarily
a difficult one. Extensive inquiries have been made
locally with a view to establishing the missing
gentleman's whereabouts, but up to a late hour
last night no success had been reported.

NEVER IN BETTER SPIRITS

A well-known figure in undergraduate Oxford,
Mr. Nigel Burtell was yesterday interviewed by
our representative. The sudden disappearance of
his relative had been, he said, a great shock to him.
He had been compelled to leave the boat at Ship-
cote Ferry, as he believed himself to be due in
Oxford for an important examination at ten o'clock

THE CANOE ADRIFT

29

yesterday. ' I have never seen my cousin in better
spirits,' was his comment. ' The doctor had told
him to be careful about his heart, and I can only
suppose that he neglected the warning and exposed
himself, in my absence, to some fetal strain. We
had been touring up to Cricklade, and it was on
the return journey that the incident happened. My
cousin did not often take exercise, and it is quite
possible that the strain was too much for him.'

ACCIDENTS UNAVOIDABLE

Interviewed yesterday, a member of the Thames
Conservancy Board explained that river accidents
are by no means uncommon ; in his view, however,
they were unavoidable. Life-belts were kept at
all the locks, and the watermen, to whose splendid
services he paid a glowing testimonial, did their best
to ensure the public safety. There was, however,
no method of patrolling the river in between the
locks, and notices were prominently exposed warning
the public that persons touring on the river did so
at their own risk. Canoes were an unsafe form of
boat for those unexperienced in swimming, since
a very small alteration of equilibrium was liable to
overturn them.

Mr. Derek Burtell is the son of the late Captain
John Burtell, killed on active service in France.
Educated at Simon Magus College, Oxford, he has
recently been living in London, where the mystery
of his fate will be felt with keen sympathy by a
large circle of friends.

*** An insurance policy against accident free
with every copy of this paper.

30 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

So far the ephemeral chronicler ; and if anybody
thinks it is easy to write that kind of English, he
does less than justice to the men who make their
living by it. A few details may be added to com-
plete the picture. The spot at which the canoe
was found was perhaps some three miles down from
Shipcote Lock, close to a disused boat-house on
the western bank. The hole in the bottom of the
canoe had jagged, splintered edges, as if it had been
freshly made — there was no question of an old
piece of caulking having come loose. The difficulty,
unanimously expressed by a solemn crowd of
watermen who inspected it, was how so deep a cut
could be made by mere impact against a piece
of shingle. It was difficult to imagine how it
could be done even if the canoe was being paddled
at full speed ; here it was probable that the pace
was quite leisurely, even if the boat itself was not
drifting at the time of the catastrophe. The owner
of the canoe insisted that he had no reason to think
it faulty ; and indeed its appearance showed that
it was almost new. The two paddles were floating
near the hat. Derek's luggage was found water-
logged in the canoe.

Eager bands of amateur detectives searched along
cither bank, and far back into the woods, to find
any trace of the missing man, but with no success.
If he had landed on the left bank, he would naturally
have made for the village of Byworth, wluch was
only half a mile from the spot ; but none of the
villagers, none of the labourers in the fields, had
seen any trace of him. The further bank was
more lonely (it was too early in the day for fishermen

THE CANOE ADRIFT 3*

to be out), but there was an encampment of boy
scouts a little lower down, and it was unlikely that
they would have let a dripping stranger go pas
unnoticed. Before the end of the day the most
optimistic of the bystanders admitted that they
were out to find a corpse.

Nigel went back to Oxford by the last train. He
had, of course, communicated with the police;
there were no parents to communicate with—
indeed, it was the melancholy fact, in spite of the
journalist's polite reference, that there was not a
soul in the world who mourned for Derek dead,
or cared whether Derek lived. He had made
innumerable acquaintances, but no friends. There
was nothing to be done, then, except to wait for
news ; and from this point of view Oxford was as
good a place for Nigel as any ; there was his viva,
too, on the morrow ; and he had in any case to
spend a day or two packing up before he left the
beautiful city, ' breathing out,' as he said to himself,
' from her gas-works all the disenchantment of
middle age '. Reporters, no doubt, would be a
nuisance, and even the police might want to ask
questions — if Derek's body were found, there would
be all the fuss and discomfort of an inquest. He
must make up his mind to go through with it. ' It'll
be experience for you,' said one of the dons, vaguely
enough ; but this was poor consolation. Nigel
held that nothing distorts one's vision in life like
experience.

CHAPTER IV

THE INDESCRIBABLE HAS ITS DOUBTS

WHEN I said that no human soul mourned
Derek dead or cared whether Derek lived
I spoke too hastily ; I should have
excepted the Indescribable. To a Company with
such vast assets, the sum needed to cover Derek's
policy was of course a mere drop in the ocean.
But (it has been finely said) business is business ;
just as a prudent housewife will waste hours tracing
a missing sixpence in the accounts sooner than pay
in sixpence from her own purse, so the Indescribable
would set agencies to work sooner than lose the
paltry sum of fifty thousand pounds. It was a
matter of principle.

In this illiterate age, it is perhaps too much to
expect that my reader is familiar with the name
of Miles Bredon. I must, therefore, at the risk of
being tedious to the better-informed, remind the
public that Miles Bredon was the agency which the
Indescribable always set to work on such occasions ;
he was their very own private detective, paid
handsomely to do their work for them, and paid
still more handsomely to do nobody else's. The
employment, naturally, was an intermittent one,
which exactly suited the indolence of the man's
taste — his round of golf, an evening spent over his

32

THE INDESCRIBABLE HAS ITS DOUBTS 33

favourite and unintelligible form of patience, his
country cottage, and the unstaled companions up
of his really admirable wife, this was all Brcdon
asked, and this, for some months at a stretch,
would be all that he got. Then there would be a
loss of fashionable jewels, a fire in an East-End
warehouse, and Bredon, greatly protesting, would
be launched out anew upon that career of detection
for which he had so remarkable an instinct, and so

profound a distaste.

He had been summoned up to London for an
emergency interview, and it was with an unpleasant
sense of being ' for it ' that he entered the loathed
portals of Indescribable House. I will not attempt
to give any word-picture of the upstairs room into
which he was shown, for that would be to suggest
that I was familiar with it, whereas neither you,
reader, nor I are ever likely to be shown up beyond
the second floor, even if either of us is lucky enough
to be insured with this admirable Company. Some-
where in the vast labyrinth of the third floor Bredon
disappeared from sight ; we may listen at the key-
hole, if you will, but profane eyes must not peep
through it. I picture gold ash-trays lying about
on the tables, real oak panelling, and one or two
Rubenses on the walls ; but perhaps I exaggerate.
Anyhow, here it was that he was closeted with
Sholto, an important cog in the business and a
personal friend ; with Dr. Tremayne, too, that
eminent practitioner who had been so highly paid
to leave off saving life, and devote his talents to
prophesying the probabilities of death.

Bredon was given something to smoke — I suppose

34 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

a two-and-sixpenny cigar. 1 It's about this Burtell
business,' said Sholto.

' Oh Lord, not that ! I read about it in the paper
as I came up. I was really delighted to notice
how mysterious the circumstances were. I assure
you, there is nothing more refreshing to my mind
than not solving mysteries. Do you mean to tell
me that the Company was involved ? '

' It was. It's a matter of fifty thousand.'

' Fifty thousand be hanged ! Let 'em sack the
under-porter and call it quits. How did this
Burtell manage to pay his premiums, anyhow ?
I know people who know him, and I always
understood that he was never supposed to pay for
anything.'

' It wasn't he who paid the premiums ; it was
his creditors. They sent a deputation round here
about it ; I tell you, it was like the Flight from

Egypt- You see » he d been raisin & neav Y loans,
and he couldn't touch his money till he was twenty-
five. That's where we came in.'

' And how old is he, or was he ? '

' Policy's only got two months to run.'

' Good Lord I Sounds like old Mottram again.
What was all this about weak health, doctor ?
You vetted him, I suppose ? '

' Weak health, my dear Bredon, isn't in it. The
man was a wreck. I've never seen anybody who'd
gone the pace so thoroughly.'

' Punch ? Or Judy ?— as Father Healy used to

say.'

' Oh, anything you like. But this last year or
two he'd been drugging. When I saw him, he'd

THE INDESCRIBABLE HAS ITS DOUBTS 35

obviously more or less reached the line of perpe^j
snow And his heart was all to pieces. I wouldn t
have given him two years ; but then we only
insure! him up to twenty-five. Simmonds .said the
same. He did his best for him, and tried to pull

him round a bit.' .

« Was it Simmonds who suggested this canoe-

tn,P Yes, it's a fad of his. I think Simmonds must
get a commission from the Thames Conservancy ;
they'd never keep their locks in repair without him.

' Well, he'd better recommend bath-chairs in
future. What does he say about this heart-failure
business ? '

' Oh, it's all right ; it's perfectly possible. If

Burt ell had been slacking for a bit, say, and had

suddenly tried to put on speed, he might quite

easily have had a seizure, fallen over sideways,

capsized the boat, and there he is at the bottom,

with the Company responsible for fifty thousand.'

' Seems to me my job is to save Simmonds'

character. What about hocus-pocus, Sholto — you

know, the disappearing trick ? '

' It's possible. I've fished on the Thames before

now, and it's possible to go miles, sometimes,

without meeting a soul. But how was the fellow

going to do it ? You see, the money would go to

the cousin ; and it's quite certain that there wasn't

any love lost between them. Why should Mr.

Derek Burtell obligingly disappear, to let Mr. Nigel

Burtell come in for a nice legacy ? '

* What sort of fellow is this Nigel ? He wasn't
inset.*

36 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' We've made inquiries, and he seems to be a
pretty poisonous sort of worm. Fifty per cent
aesthete and the rest devil, I should say. But
there are no convictions against him for murder so
far, if that's what you mean.'

' Well, we seem to be in with a gaudy crowd.
Seems to me the Company ought to engage a
parson to inspect people's morals before we insure
them. What exactly am I expected to do ? 1

' Oh, go down to the Upper Thames and look
about for cigarette-ends. Not such a bad place
either, at this time of year. If they fish out a
corpse, it's all up. If they don't we shall have to
presume death after a time, unless you can produce
the man alive, or evidence that he was alive on
September the third. It doesn't do for the Indes-
cribable to keep people waiting. If I were you,
I'd go down at once, because the papers have given
the thing big head-lines, and there's the hell of a
lot of trippers will be coming up the Thames before
long. It's good for you, you know ; it'll take down
your fat. I wish I could be there, to see you diving
in the mud on the spot marked with an X. Well,
go to it. Them's orders.'

Bredon sent his wife an urgent request to pack
and picked her up at the cottage. It was she who
drove (while he, as he said, did the thinking) on
the motor-infested journey to Oxford. ' I don't like
it, Angela,' he said, as he sat beside her. ' I feel
as if it was going to be the beast of a complicated
business.'

' It may be your idea of a complicated business,
it's not mine. All you and I have got to do is to

THE INDESCRIBABLE HAS ITS DOUBTS 37

lounge about the Upper River in a canoe until the
watermen dig out the body. It's a long time, you
know, Miles, since you took me out in a canoe. 1
shouldn't wonder if my service arm has got a bit
flabby. I'm the only person who loses by this,
because of course I shall look a fright on the river.
Why is it that men always look like heroes when
they're boating, and women always look like
frumps? "These little ladies are determined to
make the most of the sunshine "—that kind of
thing. What's worrying you, anyhow ? '

' Oh, I've no theories about it, but even from
what the papers print you can see it isn't a straight-
forward case. It's a frame-up of some kind, that's
the trouble. It wears all the air of a frame-up,
and that means that somebody's been covering his
traces, and we've got to find out who, where, and
why.'

* But why a frame-up ? 1

' Why, don't you see, the whole thing's a little
too good to be true. The canoe-trip's all right ;
Simmonds is always recommending it. But why
should Mr. Derek Burtell take his cousin, whom
apparently he loathed, on a tour of that kind ?
Nothing puts two people at closer quarters than
a week on the river. It doesn't look right, their
going together.'

' But they weren't together when the accident
happened.'

1 I know, and why weren't they ? That's all
wrong too. All the week, while they're together,
Derek Burtell is at liberty to throw" as many fits
as he pleases. But he doesn't— he waits till his

3 8 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

cousin is out of the way, and then conks out.
Meanwhile, the cousin isn't permanently out of the
way ; he comes back again just in time to be in

at the death/

' Sure you're not being fanciful ? 9

1 Woman, I'm never fanciful. I have no instincts,
no premonitions, no unaccountable intuitions. I
just see the logic of the thing, nothing else. And I
say that all this is just a little too good to be coinci-
dence. Remember, too, that it happens on one
of the loneliest parts of the river ; that it happens
in the morning, the one time when there wouldn't
be any fishermen about. These young men, you
see, had been up the river and were coming down
again ; they had had full opportunity to explore
the ground beforehand. No, somehow, somewhere,
it's a put-up job.'

' But what kind of a job ? Suicide ? I know
how fond you are of the suicide theory.'

' Suicide doesn't work. A canoe's a perfectly
sensible kind of boat to go out in if you want to
commit suicide, more particularly if you want to
let on that it's an accident. Nobody can say,
" How could he have managed to fall out ? " if
you're in a canoe. But, just for that reason, we've
no sort of use for a canoe with a hole in the bottom.
If you want to drown, the simplest way is to drop
into the water and have done with it, not to lie
in a scuttled canoe feeling the water gradually come
up and soak your bags. I don't believe there's
anybody who could commit suicide in such a cold-
blooded way as that. On the other hand, if he
did just jump into the water and drown, leaving

THE INDESCRIBABLE HAS ITS DOUBTS 39

the canoe to mark the spot, why didn't he leave
the canoe afloat properly-or waterlogged if you
like, but at least without a hole in the bottom ?
Assuming that he wants to make the thing look
like accident, that's the very way to advertise the
fact that he did it on purpose.'

' Holmes, I seem to see what you are hinting at.
We're on the tracks of a murder, after all.'

* No, confound it, the murder idea is wrong too.
The Upper River is the last place where you're
likely to meet an old acquaintance with a grievance
and a shot-gun. If it was to be murder, it would
have to be this Nigel who's responsible, and that
doesn't do. For it must have been the other one,
Derek, who proposed the canoe trip. It's asking
too much of coincidence to suppose that the mur-
deree deliberately put himself, for a whole week,
at the disposal of the murderer. Of course, we've
got to take the possibility into account. But 1
don't like the possibility.'

' Disappearance, then ? The Mottram touch ?
It might have been worth his while.'

' Yes, but if you want to disappear, you want to
disappear in an orderly and unobtrusive sort ol
way ; you want to get clear before anybody notices
a gap in the ranks of Society. You don't want
people scouring round after you ; you don't want
the papers making a stunt of it next morning ; you
don't want to have the bows of your canoe stove
in, so that the police might think you were murdered.
That idea fits in with bits of the story— the deliberate
way, for example, in which the cousin appears to
leave him for two or three hours unaccompanied.

40 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

But the bottom of the canoe seems to knock the
bottom out of it. No, it's no use worrying, we
must have a good look round before we try to go
any further. I'm not sure it wouldn't be a good
thing to buy half a dozen canoes in Oxford, just
to try experiments with.'

' We're not going to stay in Oxford, then ? You
know, you haven't been very communicative.'

' Not if we can get a room at this inn by Eaton
Bridge. The nearer the spot the better. It must
be about twenty-four hours now since the thing
happened, and I don't want the scent to get cold
if I can help it. Besides, I want to get the atmos-
phere of the place. Oxford's all wrong.'

' I just thought you might be going to interview
this cousin person. He must be about in Oxford
still.'

' I doubt if the young gentleman shares your
admiration for me, Angela. What right have I got
to go and interview him ? I can't send up a card
with " Indescribable Company " marked on it, as
if I'd come to see about the electric light. The
Company prefers to remain anonymous in these
cases. Unless I can scrape an acquaintance with
him by accident, the cousin will have to continue
in his lamentable ignorance that I exist. No, the
Bridge for me, and the lock-keeper ; one can always
get conversation out of a lock-keeper.'

' This one may be .pretty peevish, though ; he
must have been answering a lot of questions these
last twenty- four hours.'

' That's where you come in. There are times,
you know, when I'm almost glad I married. You'll

THE INDESCRIBABLE HAS ITS DOUBTS 4.

? f > VP &

shall it be? Dogs, iwy * gardens.

ft IfS ffST. S ^interest

" - mates' the husband of the gardener doing ?
tJSLa of the gardener is look.ng for oo^
nrints on the back lawn. All right. It he seems
difficile 1 shall ask for cuttings from his obeha s.
£ don't quite see how we're to explain our
presence at the lock. The road there doesn t go
any further. Do we just say we've been told he s
got a pretty garden and

g ' On the contrary, we open the conversation by
saying " Lock ! " Then you get to work.

• Oo, are we really going to start boating at once?
I say, you'll be pretty tired and pretty late by the
time you've paddled me six

« I had thought of obviating that by taking two
paddles. Look out, this is going to be Magdalen
Bridge, not Brooklyn Bridge; try to have some
regard for the safety of the public'

4

CHAPTER V

MR. BURGESS EXPANDS

THE Gudgeon Inn proved to be empty of
visitors, its management at once hospitable
to strangers and incurious as to their errand.
They secured a quite tolerable bedroom, whose
windows looked down over the strip of grass on to
the river itself. Luncheon was a hasty meal :
Bredon was plainly full of impatience to be off, and
Angela accommodated herself to his mood. They
hired from the inn not only a canoe, but a substan-
tial length of rope, and most of the journey upstream
was in the end accomplished by towing — Miles
walking on the bank while Angela steered and gave
occasional dabs at the water in the stern. Few
things travel quicker than a toWed canoe. Indeed,
the only circumstance winch delayed them was the
melancholy presence of a few dredgers, whose crews
were occupied in dragging the bed of the stream
for further traces of the catastrophe. At one
point, where the whole stream was barred in this
way, they found it necessary to pull over the bank.
But this, fortunately, was the spot at which the
boy scouts were encamped ; and Bredon looked on
with benignant interest while no less than fourteen
good deeds were registered in their juvenile Treasury
of Merit. The scout-master, a man of some age

MR. BURGESS EXPANDS 43

and education, fell into conversation with bin,
while the operation was being conducted.

•Ironical' said Bredon, 'that so much help
should have been so close at hand when the accident

^^wS'said the stranger, ' I don't know that
we should have been very much use. You see, we
had only just moved in, and that morning the
bigger boys had gone over to Wheathampton with
the trek-cart to bring our stores over. Only the
little ones were here, cleaning up and so on.
' Then you were over at Wheathampton your-

SCl,f Why, no ; it's true I was in camp. But there
are endless little details one has to arrange for, and
I wasn't keeping an eye on the stream. Not at all,
not at all ; the boys enjoy doing it. Good morning
to you, sir.'

The plan of campaign had been amended so lar
as the lock was concerned. If they demanded the
opening of the lock, it would be necessary to go
further upstream for the look of the thing, and
this would be mere waste of time. Bredon hailed
the lock-keeper, and asked if they might tie up the
boat just underneath while they went over to
Shipcote to get some tea. The lock-keeper paused
impressively, like one struggling with the fallacy of
many questions.

' There isn't nothing against your tying up the
boat there, sir, not if you wished to. But you
won't get no tea at Shipcote, because Mrs. Barley
at the inn don't give teas. No demand for 'em,
she says ; that's how it is. You'd have got a nice

44 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

cup of tea down at the Gudgeon, but you won't get
none not at Shipcote. Of course, if you aren't in a
great hurry, I could ask Mrs. Burgess if she'd put
the pot on for you ; she do sometimes in the season.'

Miles rightly conjectured that Mrs. Burgess was
the lock-keeper's wife. By a trick of human vanity,
we always assume a knowledge of our own surname
in conversation with strangers. This was better
than anything they had dared to hope for ; the
offer was speedily accepted ; their position was
assured ; and Angela's appreciation of the garden
would have been merely perfunctory, if it had not
been genuinely forced from her by the beauty of
what she saw. Within five minutes, she actually
found herself applying to Mr. Burgess for horti-
cultural advice ; she excelled herself in superlatives ;
she called her embarrassed husband to witness that
Mr. Burgess' pinks were a fortnight ahead of their
own. So completely was she absorbed that in the
end it was Mr. Burgess himself, full of importance
over recent events, who called their attention to the
fact that he was, so to speak, the scene of a tragedy.

' Ah, yes, that drowning business,' said Bredon.
' An extraordinary affair— have you ever known the
bottom of a canoe stove in like that by running
aground on a bit of shingle ? '

' No, sir, I haven't, and you can take it from
me that I told you so. For a racing-boat I wouldn't
say, being built for speed and that ; but those
canoes is built very hard, if you see what I mean.
Light, but hard, that's how it is ; it's the quality
of the wood. In a flood, now, I won't say but you
might smash one up, or if you were shooting rapids

MR. BURGESS EXPANDS 45

■ , i j, But there aren't no rapids here, you
:\ „i than the Windrush, and if they done

he damage to the boat on the Windrush how dd
'they S ^ all the way here safe and sound?
Tint's what I want to know.

Looked sound enough. I suppose, when it passed

through the lock ? ' ,
; Well, you see, sir, we don't take much stock of
boats as they come through, not in the ordinary
way. Sees too many of 'em, that s what it is

« I suppose, if it comes to that, you don t take
much notice of the people who come through either i
Must be a nuisance when this sort of thing happens
having to answer a whole pack of questions about
what the gentlemen in the boat looked like, and
what was the exact hour at which they went through,

and all the rest of it.'

' Well, it's curious you should say that, sir,
because it so happened that I knew just when this
boat came through, and was able to give information
according. You see. sir, this young gent gets out,
and he was anxious for to catch the train at Shipcote
Station there. I told him, I did, he ought to have
got off at the bridge higher up ; then you'd have
caught the bus, I says ; the bus runs from the bridge
to Shipcote Station, I says. Oh. he says, very la-di-da
sort of gent he was. Oh, like that he says, I want to
catch the nine-fourteen. Well, I says, you've time
to catch the nine-fourteen by the footpath ; it isn't
hardly not a quarter of an hour's walk, and it's
only five minutes to nine now, I says. The devil
it is, he says, begging your pardon, mum, I make it
nine o'clock if it's a minute, he says. So I told him

46 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

I got the time here by wireless, and showed him my
watch, same as it might be to you, and that's how
it was I come to know what the time was when he
went off, you see.'

They had tea, to Angela's delight, in a little
arbour overgrown with ramblers and commanding
a long vista of the river. She was already losing
interest in the purpose of their errand, and accepting
the expedition as a holiday. Miles, though he
affected an even more conspicuous languour, was
addressing strictly business questions to Mr. Bur-
gess, who still hovered about, unskilled to close the
flood-gates of his own eloquence.

' But of course that was the gentleman you saw
on the bank ; he was out of the boat, so you had a
good look at him. But you wouldn't have been
able to answer for the one who stayed in the canoe
— and after all, that's the corpse ; you might be
called upon to identify him any day.'

' No, sir, that's a fact, you don't see much of a
gentleman who just comes through in a boat,
especially if he's wearing of a hat, same as what
this one done. Same time, I'd know the other one
anywhere. Want to catch the nine-fourteen, he
says. Oh, says I, you've time to catch the nine-
fourteen by the footpath. And so he had, you see.'

' But you'd be ready to swear that there was
another. gentleman who passed through the lock ? '
asked Bredon. These reminiscences of a dialectical
triumph were becoming somewhat wearisome.

' Excuse me, sir, but were you in any way con-
nected with the police ? ' asked Mr. Burgess, a chill
of suspicion creeping into his voice.

i ' y y

MR. BURGESS EXPANDS ^ 47

■ Good God, no,' answered B<U .fcrj-gr- ^

■No offence meant. «. But you ^e
B the police comes to me and asks q ^
then I'm prepared ^ "««ttan that, can I?

stand • but I don't hold with getting mixed up With
he police, not if you can help it. Supposing
you was the police, sir, and you come and ask me
Was there another gentleman come through the
lock? hke that, Oh yes, I says. And so there
was. But seeing as you're not connected With em
sir IH tell you more than that. There was one of
'em in the canoe when it come through the lock but
how long did he stay in the canoe ? That s what 1
say, how long did he stay in the canoe ? '

' Well, if we knew that, we should be able to tell
the newspapers something, shouldn't we ? '

* Ah, sir, them as knows isn't always them as
tells. Now, look here, sir ; I'm a plain, ordinary
man, you know what I mean ; and I don't set up
to know more than another man. But I've got
eyes, you see. Well, and this is what I'm telling
you. When that young gentleman come through
the lock in the canoe— same as it might be your
canoe, only going down instead of coming up
when that young gentleman come through the lock,

48 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

he was all sprawling on his back, same as if he was
asleep ; not steering her, sir, if you'd believe me
but just letting her float broadside on and go down
as the wind took her. Ah, says I to myself, you've
got some game on, you have. You wouldn't be
shamming asleep like that if you hadn't got some
game on, I says. Same time, I didn't take any notice
of him ; so long as a gentleman pays his fare,
that's all I've got to look to. But it stuck in my
head like, you know what I mean. Didn't seem
natural to me, that's how it was.'

* So you didn't do anything about it ? 9

' At the time, sir, no, sir. But a little after,
may have been about half an hour after, or twenty-
five minutes, I went down along the island a bit
to see after some of Mrs. Burgess' hens as had got
loose in the wood like. Well, sir, you remember
that iron bridge as you come under, just a little
way down the lock stream ? Kind of iron bridge for
foot passengers, because there's no road leads to it,
nor Like to be.'

' Yes, I remember noticing it. Joins up the
island to the West bank. What about it ? '

' Maybe you didn't notice that the steps of that
bridge is made of cement, same as the lock here.
Well, I goes past them steps, the ones on the island
bank of it, and what d'you think I see ? Foot-
marks, sir ; naked footmarks, for all the world
like Man Friday in the tale. Seemed to me some-
body 'd been swimming in the water, or paddling
maybe, and left those marks along of his feet
being wet. Of course, if you was to go there now
you wouldn't see nothing of 'em ; they'd be all

MR BURGESS EXPANDS 49

way would they be po.nt.ng ? I mean, y
go y u P the ^P, or = . And ^ ^
footmarks on the otncr sei

bn ' d N e o ? sir only the one side, same as I'm telling
vou ^ And coming down, sir, toes pointing towards
^ island So that's what makes me say to myself,

see Why he only left marks going down the steps,

you don't recollect the
bndg 'properly. Rises very sudden, sir, with iron
barAo'suJport it, coming down close to water
on either side. And I says to myself Whats to
prevent the young gentleman having laid hold of
those iron bars, standing up in the canoe, like, and
pulled himself up by his arms on to the bridge .
The banks is steep there, you see, and they was
muddy after a night of rain ; so if he'd gone ashore
he'd have been bound to leave some marks ot it.
But those prints of his wet feet on the bridge steps,
why, if I hadn't have come along within the hour,
they'd have faded away altogether, and you and

me none the wiser.'

' Then you mean he just got out of the canoe,
left it to drift, and went oft the nearest way to a
road ? '

' Not the road. sir. the railroad. If he'd have

50 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

liked to go down to the end of the island, he'd have
just had to swim the weir stream, and then he'd
be on the field track that goes straight from the
tow-path to the station. Though, mind you, he
might have come right back to the weir, same as the
other gentleman done, and crossed by the weir-
bridge, and there he'd get the short path to the
station, see ? Of course, I won't say as that would
be easy without me seeing of him ; but you know
how it is, sir, when a man's got his little bit of
garden, he can't be always looking about him, and
I've only one pair of eyes.'

' Funny, though, that nobody else should have
seen him. Because surely they would have men-
tioned it by now.'

' It would surprise you, sir, to know what a lonely
place this can be, more especially when it's early
morning. Of course, if he'd have taken the longer
path, the one opposite the end of the island, I won't
say but he'd have been seen going through Spinnaker
Farm ; he had to pass through that, you see, to get
to the station. But if he took the shorter path,
from the weir, there wasn't nobody about, not a
living soul. Come to think of it, there was a gentle-
man went through in a punt just before they came,
because I remember letting of him through. But
he'd be out of sight, you see, before I'd got the
water through the lock again.'

' Angela, we ought to be getting back. We
mustn't take up any more of your time, Mr. Bur-
gess. I'd better see Mrs. Burgess about the tea,
hadn't I ? Good afternoon ; I expect we'll be up
this way again before long.'

MR. BURGESS EXPANDS 5*
Bredon, however, had f £

o the right bank and left Ang P Farm

slowly while he -\;^Xo U s dog, fortunately
Here he was greeted by a voaie 5 ^

«Wto»^^^JSSln the matter of

ZSrJZ ^trtr'Brldon answered
pronlptly he^had, fortunately for his success on
such occasions, a good reaction-time.

' Yes we found it sure enough ; my Flossie she
see Uwhn shew-as out in the big ; field yesterday
Oh she says, whatever is that ? But she s a goo
Si F oss e she didn't open it ; she brought it
Sight to me, and of course I kept it Ul case >t was
called for. That'll be the one, sir >

She produced a voluminous waterproof tobacco-
pouch, tightly rolled into a hard cylinder Bredon
knew at the touch that it contained something more
interesting than tobacco ; but he saw no reason to
mention the point. ' I couldn't be sure where
I'd dropped it,' he said. ' Was it along the tow-
path ? '

• Yes, sir, on the tow-path, sir ; just where it
leaves the river over against the island. I thought
at first it might have been dropped by the gentleman
who came through yesterday morning early, and
I said to myself, " Oh dear, he'll never come back
for it", because he passed in such a hurry you
could see he was running for the train.'

52 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

Bredon began to regret his role of pouch-loser ;
it would hardly be decent to show too much interest
in the stranger. ' I expect that was the gentleman
I passed myself yesterday morning. About nine
o'clock it would be ; a young, dark-haired gentle-
man, with no hat on. I'm glad to know he caught
the train, for he looked to me as if he were going to
miss it.'

'That would be the one, sir.' Bredon did not
venture on any closer examination. He hurried
back down the path, unrolling the package as he
went. It proved to be. a spool of camera-films —
one that had been used and rolled up by unskilful
hands. ' That ', he said to himself, ' might be much
worse. That might be very much worse.' And he
thrust it away into an inner pocket.

' Well,' he asked, as he executed a kind of back
somersault into the canoe, ' how's that for a day's
outing ? You obviously are the complete river-
girl ; your disguise takes in everybody. I suppose,
after all that, we shall hear at Eaton Bridge that
they've fished up the corpse, and it's no business of
ours how it got there.'

' They'll fish up at least two corpses if you try
to get into the boat like that again. Well, what did
you think of the Burgess theory ? I thought him
rather splendid. Of course, I may have been just
carried away by his eloquence. But it seemed to
me he was the complete detective. I was wondering
whether you and he couldn't swap jobs ; I could
do the gardening part, and I suppose you could
manage to sit backwards on to a lock gate till it

MR. BURGESS EXPANDS 53
opened I'm sure the Indescribable would find Mr.

To 5 . ^Burgess is all wrong. Anybody
eould see he's talking through h,s hat. No don
ask me why just now ; ask me after dinner, i
want to try and work the thing out myself a bit
I wonder Uthe Gudgeon has such a thing as a dark

room ? '

CHAPTER VI

THE ARCHIMEDES TOUCH

THE Gudgeon Inn is the sort of institution
that only exists for the sake of people
who see life in inverted commas. Exter-
nally it is just like a thousand other inns; the
creaking sign-board, the modest lintel-announce-
ment of the licence, the perspective of doors and
passages that greets you as you enter, show no
promise of disillusionment. But once you are
really inside, you know the difference. The dining-
room has no muslin curtains, there is no bamboo
firescreen ; the tables are not covered with ash-
trays and salt-cellars advertising beer and mineral
waters ; there is no vast, unwieldy sideboard
heaped with unnecessary coffee-pots. The tables
are of fumed oak, and the flower-vases on them are
of modern crockery in a daring orange ; the side-
board is real Elizabethan, and serves no purpose
whatever, any more than the three large pewter
plates which rest upon it, obviously straight from
an old curiosity shop. There are no stuffed animals
in glass cases, no sentimental pictures with explicit
legends in the manner of the later nineteenth cen-
tury ; no strange sea-shells on the mantelpieces,
no horse-hair sofas, no superannuated musical-
boxes. The walls are very bare and beautifully

54

THE ARCHIMEDES TOUCH

55

i» , a few warming-pans and some

whitewashed, a lew there are open

mezzotints are all their ™ tUed floors ,

fire - P laees ^jgU^SUdc mot-

S^^lTa word, the inn has been

room only a place they call the Ingle Nook
I " t find a dart-board anywhere, or an antima-
cassar Their >dea of a beer-mug is a thing you
stick up on a shelf and look at

It's such a pity you've no taste/ suggested Angela
« Taste ? Who wants taste in a country pub .
You can get taste in your own drawing-room. A
country pub ought to grow up anyhow ; with
grandfather clocks that really belonged to grand-
fathers, and a spotty piano all out of tune and
sham flowers and things. Don't you see that this
kind of thing isn't natural ? '

* Well, switch off the art-criticism and do a little
brain work. Tell me why poor old Burgess is all
wrong about the drowning mystery.'

' Oh, that ? Well, in the first place, as I said
this morning, what's the use of the hole in the
canoe? If the man isn't really drowned, but
wants us to think he is, why doesn't he pretend the
canoe just tipped over on one side and swamped ?

They often do.'

' It only surprises me that they don't do it oftener.

But go on.'

56 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' Here's another improbability — Burtell's got a
weak heart. Tremayne's vetted him, and Simmonds
has vetted him, and they both know what they're
talking about. Now, Burgess wants us to believe
that that man pulled himself up by the arms from
a canoe on to the top of a bridge, and then, probably,
swam the stream. If he did do either of those
things, it was suicide all right for a man with a heart
like Burtell's. And that brings up a further point
— why should he want to leave the boat just there,
such a short way down the lock stream ? If he'd
only held on another half-mile or so, he'd have got
past the junction where the weir stream flows in,
and then he could land and make tracks for the
station without crossing any branch of the river
at all. Again, Burgess found the prints of a naked
foot. What on earth did Burtell want to go and
take off his shoes and socks for ? He'd want
them when he got ashore. Ninthly, and lastly, if
he scuttled the canoe right up there, just below the
lock, how did it manage to float down three miles,
all water-logged, before it was found at half-past
one ? '

' Still, you've got to give some account of those
footmarks.'

' Oh, I'm not denying there's been some hanky-
panky at the bridge. Assuming, of course, that Mr.
Burgess is telling the truth, and he doesn't seem to
me to have much imagination. I'm only here to
establish a death, or if possible the absence of a
death. So I'm only concerned with what Mr.
Derek Burtell has been up to. But if I were the
police, and if I hadn't the singular fondness of the

THE ARCHIMEDES TOUCH 57

r for Irvine to find the body before you do
£££ eS ! should be beginmng to wonder

X Mr. Nigel Burtell has been up . to ,
• But his alibi is surely pretty sound.
•Ifs too sound, that's the trouble. It looks so
confoundedly like an alibi, if you see what I mean.
£ tL canoe with just —
catch his train. He engages the loc* ^keeper i
conversation about the exact time so that the hx*
keeper can swear not only to him but to the precise
hour at which he left. Then he reappears here
an hour or two later, and starts talking to the
barmaid about the time-I found out that from
her. Then he conceives some anxiety about s
cousin-and why was he so anxious? Why du
he set out almost expecting to find him drowned ?
-and he marches oft up the river, not alone mark
you, but with an independent witness who can
swear to his actions. I dare say it's all right, i
only get the impression that Mr. Nigel Burtell s
behaviour is a little too like an alibi to be true.

' Do you always suspect a man if he's got a good
alibi ? '

No, but hang it all, there's the motive here as
plain as a pikestaff. I gather he wasn't particularly
fond of his cousin in any case. And he was the
residuary legatee ; he walks into the fifty thousand
if his cousin is proved dead. On the other hand, it
was necessary to do something pretty quick ; be-
cause by September Derek is due to be twenty-
five, and then the money all goes to the Jews.
On the principle that motive is the first thing to go
for, Mr. Nigel Burtell is the first man to come under

58 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

suspicion. And his alibi has got to be pretty
good wearing material. Though, as I say, it's no
business of mine.'

' What you mean is, you think Nigel Burtell
slipped round to the wooded part of the island,
waylaid his cousin, and murdered him just at the
bridge ; then he scuttled the canoe — why ? Per-
haps he thought it would sink, and so hide the
traces. Then he ran back to the station and got
there just in time for the train.'

' If so, the young gentleman is probably suffering
from a cold. Half an hour's journey in a railway
carriage, when you are dripping wet in all your
clothes, is trying to the strongest constitution.
You seem to forget that he's got to swim the weir
stream.'

' But he could take off his clothes to do that.'

' And travel as a third-class faun ? No, don't
say that men have swum rivers with their clothes
balanced on their heads. I don't deny that men
have done it, but I'm quite sure Nigel Burtell never
did. It's a matter of practice. No, let us amend
your proposition by suggesting that he crossed .
the weir by the bridge, ran up along the further
bank of the weir-stream, stripped, swam across, ran
through the wood, and so caught and murdered his
cousin as he came past. That would explain why
the marks on the bridge were the marks of naked
feet.'

' That isn't giving him very much time to do it
in.'

' Exactly. It isn't the running that is so apt to
take up time ; it's the killing. A really tidy murder

THE ARCHIMEDES TOUCH 50

can seldom be arranged in the fraction of a second
Besides what made him want to hop up on to a
Srito ' The sides are open, so he wasn t hidden.
b 0 bourse, if there were a body forthcoming we
might know more about the cause of death, and
8 ight be able to see the point of the bridge At

present I can't. But the time ! t meant cutting
the thing beastly close. It would be all right,
perhaps, either to kill your man or to scutje your
boat, but could there be time for both ?

' Miles, I expect you'll think me a most appalling
fool, but I've got an idea.'

* I know what it is.'
' I bet you don't.'

* Tell me.'

'Then you'd say you knew it was that. You
tell me.'

' Then you'd say that was your idea.
' Write it down, then.'

* We both will.' Miles scribbled a sentence on
the back of an envelope, and Angela on a tiny
memorandum sheet. Then the documents were
exchanged.

'Yes,* said Miles, 'I don't think you'd bettci
take to crime. I can read you like a book, can't I ?
You know, your idea's quite an ingenious one, and I
dare say I didn't think of it more than half an hour
before you did. But it won't do — you see that,
don't you ? '

Angela seemed a little hurt. 1 You mean, who
pushed off from the lock ? '

' No, that might just be managed. But the
distance — how is a wind, short of a hurricane,

60 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

•

going to blow a canoe a hundred yards downstream
in ten minutes ? That's where it doesn't work.'

' I suppose not. Blow, it was rather a clever
idea. Still, you'd got it too. I suppose you're
not going to release any theories, then ? I know
that mulish face of yours when you want to look
sphinx-like.'

' I wasn't aware that I had any expression of the
kind.'

' Oh, but you have, dearest, it's quite notorious.
Only this afternoon, when you were paying for the
tea, Mr. Burgess said to me, " Why does he look
so sphinx-like, standing among the pinks, like ? "
Anyhow, you don't mean to part with your own

ideas, do you ? '

' Not till I've got some. To-morrow, you see, if
you're feeling very kind, you are going into Oxford
to get that reel of films developed. If you get
them done quick, and stand over the man to £ce that
he does it, I suppose you ought to be able to produce
some unfixed prints by the afternoon, oughtn't
you ? Meanwhile, I shall have been conducting a
few experiments.'

' What sort of experiments ? '

* Oh, just in drowning myself.'

' Well, don't be too successful about it. Or if
you are, do get found all right ; it would be a great
bore not to know whether one was a widow or not.'

' You never know. I might get carried down
into the paper mill, and come out at the other end
in folio lengths. It would be very annoying to
have the account of one's own death printed on one,
wouldn't it ? Meanwhile, what do you say to a

THE ARCHIMEDES TOUCH 61
I could have started a patience.

fir J- and the lot fell upon Bredon. Well, nc
d' ' ve spent my morning in a way very un-
common among English gentlemen. Largely. I

"VSfifSS — - » »*-

' *?\:r^l^<o the lock i,St below
here, because that's where they've got the Burtei
canoe -ifs lying careened on the bank. Of course
I wanted the man to let me take it away with n e
and have all sorts of fun with it, but it appeared to
be more than his place was worth. I did, however
by means of a bet, manage to find out what I wanted
to know— which was, how long it would take the
canoe to fill with a hole that size in its bottom.
* You mean he let you sink it ? '
' No, but we put it in together and let it sink with
a rope round each thwart to haul it out again
with. I took care to lose my bet, of course. Mean-
while I found out exactly how long it would take to
fill. I also noticed how long it would take to get
one inch of water in, and so on. Then I went
off and did the Archimedes touch.'
' Who's he ? '

1 SureLv vou have not forgotten Archimedes in

62 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

the Latin grammar, who was so intent on watching
the way his bath was overflowing that he did not
even notice his country had been captured ? I
retired to a position where I could undress with
decency, got into the canoe in my gent's University
bathing suit, and drifted downstream, baling
for dear life. Only I was baling in, not out, if you

understand me.'

* But how did you know how much to bale ? '

' It was only approximate, of course. But I
calculated the time fairly easily by knowing how
soon the first inch of water ought to get inside.
I don't know if I ever told you that at school they
thought me rather a dab at mathematics.'

• You whispered it in my ear, darling, when we sat
making love on the promenade at Southend. But
what did all this tell you ? '

' Why, approximately how far a canoe would
drift with wind and stream in its favour, when it
was sinking at a given rate. It didn't get very far.
Incidentally, I fell out after a bit, which was what
I expected. One's balance is never perfect. How-
ever, I swam to shore all right, and dressed. Then
I paddled up here, got hold of another canoe, and
repeated the same experiment, leaving our canoe
to float down empty and baling into it as we went.
That showed me how far a canoe would float before
it filled when there was no heavy body in it.'
' I still don't see exactly what use it all was.
• You don't pretend to be able to say exactly how far
the Burtells' canoe was paddled down from the
lock, and how much it drifted ? Or h<w far it
drifted before it got the hole made in it ? '

THE ARCHIMEDES TOUCH

63

stream, getting no help fro «< ^ or

fore I'm in a position to say hat
whatever it was, can t r0UgWv -calcu-
hlgh r UP the stream han ^JJ t have

lated point-i it haa, w w hich it was

a all t nfway down from f ove^the

lock-stream in the time given, with that

B -t°L n t° whatever else happened at the iron

wasn't there that the boat jjM^W?
I see you're trying to exculpate Mr. Nigci »

■I'm not trying to prove J?,^
experiments do seem to suggest that he can

c\ hand in it. _

had a hand in it.' ruraiw vou

' That's a tiny bit disappointing. Because you
see, ., experiments do very much suggest that Mr.
Nigel BurteU had a hand in it.

4

CHAPTER VII

THE CAMERA CANNOT LIE

ANGELA brought out six prints. She laid
them before her husband one by one,
tantalizing his curiosity by insisting that
he should have a good look at each as it came.

The first print represented a board with the title
' Church Notices ' ; and underneath this title
appeared a lurid poster of a cinema performance,
combining a maximum of thrill with a minimum of
clothing. It was obvious that the finger of the
humorist had been at work ; that two photographs
had been taken on the same film.

The second was a close-up view of a particularly
distressing gargoyle, probably attached to the same

Church porch.

The third represented a group of cows, knee-
deep in the river, regarding the camera with that
patient curiosity which cows register at the sight
of any human activity.

The fourth, also taken from the river, showed a
thin promontory of land, overgrown with a wealth
of garden flowers ; in the centre of these stood
the figure of a stalwart gardener, from the waist
downwards.

The fifth, taken at an irregular angle which
played havoc with the perspective, looked down a

64

THE CAMERA CANNOT LIE

65

m < of appar^yst- ^^^J-

footprint was dlsce ™ b „; ' °„ f ocus to be clearly

down ~ ffi ^ UseH had obviously
dist.ngujshed. The can performer

been held on a t It as U sight of this Bredon
had manipulated it. At the signt

whistled sharply. k from a

thwart ; the head was turned sideways ^ MJJ
propped up by a rest and a cushion. The w hole
Sde suggested a complete a Wonment^ of
repose ; something about the bend of the neck,
something about the way in which the left arm
lay crushed under the body, suggested that it was
not the attitude in which a man would naturally
have fallen asleep. A hat shaded most of the lace,
but revealed a clean-shaven chin. The back seat ot
the boat was empty ; the other paddle leaned care-
lessly against it.

* Is he d-dead ? ' asked Angela, her hand on her

husband's shoulder.

' Dead, or dead drunk, or drugged, perhaps. 1
think the person who took this picture meant us

66 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

to think he was dead, anyhow. He's not a very
pretty sight, you see, in any case. On the face of
it, I must say it looks as if somebody had— well,
had finished him off and then taken a photograph
of him.'

' But that's rather horrible. It seems so dis-
gustingly cold-blooded.'

' It needn't have been the murderer, of course.
It might have been somebody who found him lying
dead— apparently dead— and thought it important
to have a snapshot of him looking like that. Any-
how, the man who took that photograph is the man
we want to get hold of. He must be able to give
us news of Derek Burtell which is later than the

lock-kccpcr's. '

' You're certain it was taken at the lock-stream
bridge ? Oh yes, of course, the footprint-photograph
shows that.'

' Even if it didn't, there could hardly be any
doubt. You haven't looked attentively enough
at Number Four, or you'd have recognized an

old friend.'

* Oo, is that Mr. Burgess ? '

' There's no doubt about the lock and the island.
There can't be two locks arranged like that. Now,
you say this throws suspicion on Nigel Burtell.
Let's hear how you'd work it out.'

' Dash it all, it makes him out such a perfect
brute. But you say he is one. Let's assume that
his alibi is all wrong ; that he didn't really take the
train to Oxford at all, but went there by a fast
motor— if he ever did go to Oxford. No, that
won't do ; he couldn't get to the motor soon enough.

CAMERA — ' nT T1E 67

Le fs say that he £t g - Ox^at A £

turned . which the island,
thing to do; *en h ed»nted« { b ^

tUroug h fl-J^-^tider the influence of

Ut S r'that s m P obable enough. He leaves
a drug , that down a little

llis camera on the bndg the" g ^ ^ ^

He S eom« up above the bridge again, swim,
ready. Me comes uy an d— then I suppose
out to the canoe as it floats by and tnen ,

he does bridge.
iSK VSEf -n

the canoe again ; brings it in to the bank, and puts
. £*£. Then he sits down fa, the sUnt of
the canoe, as if nothing had happened and pa dd e
it down a good long distance. He ties a weight
to the body digs a hole in the bottom of the canoe,
gets out and makes tracks for the high road, or
perhaps for Wheathampton Station. It doesn t
seem to work out awfully well.'

' What an imagination you've got ! But there s
one point, don't you see, where you must be
wrong. He took a photograph of the footprints
before he took a photograph of the body in the
canoe. Therefore the footprints were made before
he climbed up on to the bridge, not after he went
down.'

'Blow, I'd forgotten that. But then how do

68 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

you account for the footsteps going down, not
coming up ? '

' He walked up the stairs backwards. You can
see that, if you look at the photograph carefully.
The marks are the marks of heels. You don't walk
downstairs on your heels, you walk on your toes
and the flat part of the soles. These marks show
that he walked up backwards.'

' But why backwards ? '

' Possibly just to create confusion. More prob-
ably because the prints of his toes might, in the
millionth chance, have given him away. If he'd
a hammer toe, for example, that would show up
quite clearly. I dare say Messrs. Wickstead would
be able to provide us with a very nice sketch of
Mr. Nigel Burtell's foot. But heels are so much
alike, you can't put in any Bertillon-work on them.'

' Yes, I suppose that's true.'

' But there's another thing. Nigel, if it was Nigel,
hadn't been in the water when he climbed that bridge.'

' I don't see how you make that out.'

' Why, if one's been in the water one drips. A
few drops would have been bound to fall on the
steps, and then they would have been reproduced
in the photograph. Since there are no marks
except the footprints, it's clear that the prints
were made by somebody who had nothing on, or
anyhow nothing on his feet, who had not yet been
into the water.'

' Why were his feet wet, then ? '

' Because he'd been walking in the long grass,
which was still wet from the night's rain. I imagine
it had been raining in the night.'

THE CAMERA CANNOT UE *9

:E£?£3 -e.

Four, you will see a puddle.

cdvably be examined by so.™ passer-by, went up
""•ST! SS't see what he wanted to photo-

^^to^nk that he <hd ~f to.
AU ™ know is that he did. I don't know if you
often go u P sta lr s backwards, but if you have the
habit you will realize that it's apt to make your
stance I little uncertain. And if you are carrying a
camera at the time, it is quite possible for some
slight lurch to make you pull the trigger by mistake
Then, realizing that you've pulled the trigger, or
fearing that you have, you pass on from Number
Five to Number Six. Number Five doesn t look
to me like a photograph taken on purpose. It s

all skew-eyed, you see.
'I see. Then he photographed his man first,

and murdered him afterwards ? '

' I don't know that he murdered him at all, in
the way you mean. I think, after he'd taken the
photograph, he let himself down by the framework
of the bridge, put the camera on board, and pushed
the canoe gently in to the bank, where his clothes
were. Then he dressed again, sat down in the stern,
and paddled on. I don't think he dug a hole in the

70 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

canoe and left the man in it to drown. I think he
drowned his man first, tying a weight on him, I
suppose, or getting him under a bank somewhere,
and then scuttled the canoe. If you look carefully,
you can see that the hole in the canoe was made
from the outside, not from the inside. It's bigger
on the outside, on the inside it's quite small, not
the size of a threepenny bit. He must have hauled
the bows of the canoe out of water to do that, and
it would be easier to do it when the canoe was empty.
Besides, I take it he didn't want to run any risks
of a rescue. He saw to it, while he was about it,
that his man drowned all right.'

' And you do really think it was Nigel Burtell ? '

' I do and I don't. He's got a perfect alibi, as
far as we know. Yet he stood to gain by the whole
thing, because the money was coming to him. I
love my Nigel with an N, because he was needy. I
hate him with an N, because he was nowhere near.
I don't see what to make of it. The old lady at
Spinnaker Farm told me that a gentleman came
through that morning in a tearing hurry, wanting to
catch a train. I suppose that must have been the
nine-fourteen. I supposed therefore that the gentle-
man must have been Nigel. What was he doing at
Spinnaker Farm, if he had really come from the
weir bridge ? On the other hand, how on earth
had he the time to do all the things we want him
to have done ? All this is very perplexing, and
I think I am going to have an interview with
Nigel.'

' I thought you said that was impossible.'

' Not now, because I've got an introduction. I

THE CAMERA CANNOT LIE 7"

W take «• '

■ * - Numbers

S„„ .1 tttas "»>'« »Evay S l.appc,„.. S -

you and I are going to take the car over to Lech
lade. Or possibly Cncklade.

The porch at Lcchlade was clearly the pofditlg
wanted it was a matter of more research to find the
Tdenticai cinema poster, but fortunately £ remamed
unchanged. ' We needn't worry to fake the thing
too carefully/ observed Bredon < it will be easy to
make him believe that he made a mistake. I he
whole expedition only occupied some forty minutes ,
before the hour was up, they were on the river
again, looking out for the sight, not uncommon
on such a hot afternoon, of cows standing about in
shallow water. For the sake of appearances, they
paddled up a little beyond Shipcote Lock, returning
there for tea. It was hardly to be expected that
Mr. Burgess would be posing again for his portrait,
and it was necessary for Bredon to understudy
the part. Numbers Five and Six on the new film
were exposed with the camera tilted up in the air,
and the fake reel was complete. Angela had made
some photographic purchases in Lechlade, and the

72 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

films were developed, successfully enough, the same
evening.

' They've all come out splendidly,' she announced,
as she returned, wiping her hands, from the impro-
vised dark-room. ' There's one thing, though.
If it wasn't Nigel who took those photographs,
won't he be a bit surprised at your assuming that
it was ? And if it was Nigel who took them,
won't you rather put him on his guard by letting
on where it was you found them ? '

' I don't think we need worry very much over that.
You see, I shall explain that I found them by
accident, and had to develop them in order to get
any sort of idea who they belonged to. Nigel
may deny all knowledge of them, but he must admit
that it was a reasonable guess of mine to suppose
they were his, since he was known to have been
up the river as far as Lechlade. And of course
I shall have to practise a certain economy of truth
in explaining where I found them. I shall have
to say that I found them lying in a hedge somewhere
near Shipcote Station. That won't tell him which
path they were found on ; and if I put on a suffi-
ciently stupid air, he won't suspect that I suspect
anything. But I ought to be able to get a little
out of him, I think. Archimedes to-day, Machia-
velli to-morrow.'

CHAPTER VIII
A COMMON-ROOM DINNER
T-fcY the next afternoon the prints were dry

detained him at Carfax, and during its inch-by-inch
tSm he was briskly hailed from the pavement
bvS Robert. All families keep an uncle or an
It in Oxford ; most families slink about Oxford
with guilty eonseiences when they pay it a v sit
becaufe the Uncle or Aunt has not been informed
Uncle Robert's ' What on earth brought you down
here ? * was distinctly tactless ; Brcdon had no
desire to advertise his mission. In the end, he only
got away by promising to dine with Uncle Robert
in Salisbury Common-room that evening, alter a
warning telegram to Angela.

Nigel's digs were in that state of chaos which
can only be achieved when rooms are being dis-
mantled and re-furnished simultaneously. All Ox-
ford lodging-house-keepers cling to the illusion
that they can let their rooms to undergraduates
' furnished ' ; generations of undergraduates come
in, and tactfully extrude the unwelcome ornaments.
It need hardly be said that Nigel had made a
? 6 73

74 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

particularly clean sweep of all the ' things ' which his
landlady had expected him to harbour. Now,
Nigel's darling monstrosities had been swept from
the walls, Nigel's French novels lay in piles about
the floor, Nigel's mauve curtains were folded, never
again to look out from those windows ; meanwhile
the tide of redecoration was already beginning to
flow in ; ' The Soul's Awakening ' and ' The Mon-
arch of the Glen' stood ready to resume their
immemorial places, and in that wilderness the
aspidistra prepared to flourish anew. The outgoing
tenant had a slight air of Marius sitting on the ruins
of Carthage, and Bredon hastened to apologize for
the untimeliness of his interruption.

' Not at all,' was the answer. ' Life would be
unlivable but for the interruptions. You'll have
some absinthe, of course ? '

* No, really, thanks. It's very kind of you. I
only looked in about a reel of films which I found the
day before yesterday, near the river. I'd no idea,
of "course, who they belonged to, so I had them
developed. It was easy to see the photographs had
been taken by somebody who had just been up the
river ; and of course ... the papers ... one
knew' you had been up that way, and I thought
perhaps it might have been you who'd dropped
them. I was coming in to Oxford anyhow, so I
thought I'd look in on the chance.'

There was a perceptible hesitation in the other's
manner, but nothing of fear, it seemed— hardly
even of embarrassment. ' Most awfully good oi
you. It's a bore losing one's films, isn't it ? They're
one's children, in a way— or rather, of course, they're

A COMMON-ROOM DINNER 75

mcnts, ana — ' . t0 scre am.

Miles repressed a interview ;

But he did not want to hasten over

Hberly h Sd ' develop them ; but what
cie was I to do ? I'm afraid the last two haven t

come out very well.'

The other still hesitated for a moment , but it was
dimcuh to know whether he was wondering how
JXh other knew, or merely collecting ; InmseK
for fresh epigrams. ' I can't remember what they
were/ he said at last. ' Did they convey anything to
you _ SO me wraith of meaning ? '

' I'm afraid they were hopelessly fogged.
' Ah, yes ; Apollo turned infanticide once more^
The God of light, but he strikes with blindness. 1
do hope the cows came out ? I meant to enlarge
that one, and give it to my landlady, if possible with
a quotation from Wordsworth underneath.'

Bredon had by now taken the parcel from his
pocket and unwrapped it. 'Yes, yes,' went on
Nigel, ' the church at Lechlade ! A fantasy, you
know ; an idea of poor Derek's— he was fond of
faked photographs. And that gargoyle— I took
that because it's the precise image of our Dean.
I only wished it had been a rainy day. The cows,
as I say, were for the landlady ; they are in my
simpler manner. But the lock— that is my chef
d'oeuvre\ A lock-keeper really keeping his lock,
really defending it; "You shall come through,"

76 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

he seems to say, " only by playing leapfrog over my
living body ". It's a souvenir, too, because it was
at that lock I had to take leave of my cousin. Did
you ever notice how annoying it is to have to talk
regretfully about a person you quite particularly
disliked ? ' ,

' Those last two are very badly fogged, you know,
said Bredon, refusing the invitation to digress.
' It looks to me as if there was something wrong
with your shutter. You wouldn't like me to
have a look at it, I suppose ? I know something

about cameras.'

For the first time in the interview, Nigel seemed
really taken off his guard. ' What ? . . . The
camera ? ... Oh, well, it's packed. In fact, I
believe it's sent off. It's extremely kind of you—
but of course, you are a sort of foster-father to these
picture-children of mine. You must really keep the
copies you have taken ; I can have some others
printed. I wish you would have had some absinthe.
By the way,' he continued abruptly, ' where was it
exactly that you picked up the film ? In a hedge,

you said ? ' •

' You remind me, I must apologize for forgetting

something ; I found it wrapped in a waterproof

tobacco-pouch, which presumably belongs to you

too. Here it is. Yes, I was joining my wife, you

know, on a river trip, and she had gone on ahead

—she' was to pick me up at Shipcote Lock. So

I went to Shipcote Station, and took the field path

to the weir. You may remember, perhaps, that

there is a point at which two paths join, one leading

to the weir and the other to a farm. It was just

A COMMON-ROOM DINNER

77

in the grass. ^ sh.pcote Station alter

that you took the tram at P it occurred
V ou had left your cousin- son J
to me that the films mfifj™ was a UtUe
• That would be it, to oe tQ ^

station. The train w *» c tbat a train like
station, and one always assumes that
that is just about ^ movf-vhy I d

for it is contrary to ^^^ms must have
trains. Anyhow, I ran, and the n ^

b-n jolted, out of my g**^ » out

think of them in tne ™ 6 -. , ~
their orphaned hands to an Wjjg*. about
And with all those undeveloped possibilities

them I It affects me deeply.
U " Funny the way things do disappear and don t
Tfs more than two days now, isn t it since you
first Z ed your cousin, and nothing's been heard
o Wm afive or dead. You'll excuse a stranger s
m"nce, I hope, but I should be tremendously
interested to know if you yourself have any guess
what has happened. One's always hearing the
. tag tied oT don't you know, and it seems so
silly to be able to say I've met you, without being
able to say what you thought about it all.

• Oh personally I think he committed suicide.
There wasn't much else to do, you know ; he was a
hopeless crock, and he couldn't get on without the

dope/ i
* But the hole in the bottom of the boat ...

afraid you trespass

78 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

history. I don't think he wanted it to be known
that he'd committed suicide, because there's some
property I should fall heir to if he died. He hadn't
much imagination, Derek, but he hated me with a
hatred that was almost artistic. He wanted every-
body to think that he had just disappeared. And
in his vague, stupid way he thought the canoe had
better disappear too. So he dug a hole in the bottom
of it, expecting that it would sink.'

1 That's a very interesting idea. Very interesting.
But I really oughtn't to be keeping you from your
packing any longer. I suppose you'll be off to-
morrow ? '

' Unless they find anything, and there's an in-
quest. My last term, you know. Poor Oxford ! '

' May I have the envelope back with the prints ?
I've nothing else to take them in. It's very kind
of you to let me keep them as a memento of my
little rencontre. No, please don't come down. I
shall find my way out all right. Good evening.'
And, as the door closed behind him, Bredon added,
' If Providence ever turned out such another ghastly
little worm as you, I should begin to doubt whether
there was a Providence '. However, he had the
picture of Nigel's appearance, and the imprint, if he
wanted it, of Nigel's thumb, so that the afternoon's
work had not been wasted. His evening, too, for all
the hasty anathemas he pronounced against Uncle
Robert, was destined to be not entirely uneventful.

A Common-room dinner is an experience which
strikes a chill into the heart of the bravest, when it
comes to him for the first time. True, it has not
all the horrors of High Table ; he has not to endure

A COMMON-ROOM DINNER 79
the fancied scrutiny of --gj^^SK
phere is all tne m ' ^ Who is this man next

In the latter ca F authority, if only you

SJ££ O^L^ A- the fed advances
occasionally made to you an attempt at welcome ?
LTnTo/can you gauge from their 1 frequency or
heartiness the local popularity of your host ? Uncle
Robert was a supernumerary member of the Com-
mon-room, and a bore at that. His guests were
usually men of his own kidney, and there was a
general tendency to glare at them without speaking.
Bredon felt, in an expressive modern phrase, like
something the cat had brought in.

The conversation turned, at first, on greyhound-
racing a subject which the company treated with a
broad-mindedness that sprang from inexperience
One very old gentleman had to be convinced, with
great difficulty, that it was the hare, not the hounds,
which worked by electricity ; he was positive of
the contrary— it was notorious. The shaded lights
cast a decorous radiance ; portraits of old Fellows
looked down quizzically from their frames, as if
enjoying a joke at the expense of their successors ;
scouts whispered at your elbow in accents which
suggested the attempt to achieve efficiency without
servility. Exquisite pieces of silver reflected your
neighbour's face at a hundred ridiculous angles.
The wine saved the situation ; the wine was good.

So THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' Did it ever strike you,' an old gentleman was
saying just opposite, in a loud, well-modulated
voice that sounded as if it had been designed to
control traffic— ' did it ever strike you, Filmore,
what a very singular thing it is that dogs should
bark when they are in pursuit of their prey ? Very
much as if Nature intended that they should be
given warning of their enemy's approach. Doesn't
work, you know, from the evolution point of view ;
in a Darwinian world the dog which barks lowest
ought to catch the most rabbits, and so the bark
ought to disappear, don't you see ? There was a
man reading a very interesting paper about that
at one of these congresses the other day ; and he
said, you know, he thought the bark of the dog
was intended to drown the squealing of the rabbit,
so that the other rabbits shouldn't know anything
disastrous was happening. A most singular idea.'

' Is he a scientist ? ' asked Bredon in a low voice.

' No. Ancient history,' returned his Uncle.
' Man called Carmichael. Always full of odd ideas.
Never stops talking.'

The man next Bredon on the other side was
now heard to say, in answer to some question,
' Yes, Magus men, both of them. The younger
one only just going down. Good riddance '. Bre-
don had the instinct we all sometimes have, that
the subject of the conversation would interest him.
He stole a look at his neighbour, and suddenly
realized why there had been something reminiscent
about his appearance. There was only a touch of
the Lcchlade gargoyle about his face, but it was
perfectly unmistakable. This, then, must be the

A COMMON-ROOM DINNER

81

Dean o, Simon Magus, and his topic, obviously, the

^iXTsuppose I ' asked a voce from beyond

h ' m ! don't think so^ Burte^nough instinct
of tidiness to finish up » that way. «

« Talking of detectives,' broke in Mr Carmichad
fromTe other side of the table, ■ I had a very cu,
ious experience myself once in connexion with a
murder case ' (As this story has already been told
Tgtter length, even, than Mr. Carrnkhae used
in telling it, I will not even give an abstract oi it
here.) ' Which just shows \ he concluded how
one's judgments are apt to go astray. If it wasn t
for that warning, I should be inclined to say hat
there is no difficulty in solving this Burtell business.

no difficulty at all.' . . t „

' Oh, good, Carmichael/ chuckled a junior fellow.
' This is in your best form. Tell us all about it.

« I was wrong. I should have said, it is very
easy to see why the Thames watermen have failed
to recover the body. Whether the young man is
the victim of accident, murder, suicide, or disappear-
ance I don't know at all. But it's quite easy to
see why the body hasn't been found. They are
looking in the wrong place for it.'

' Oh, come on ; where ought they to be looking ?

82 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' Above Shipcote Lock, not below it. They
must have found the body by now, if there was a
body to find. Yet, if the young fellow had been
wandering about between Shipcote and Eaton Bridge,
somebody must have come across him. I say, then,
his disappearance, whatever its cause, must have
taken place above, not below the lock.'

Bredon broke in in spite of himself. ' But the
elder Burtell was in the canoe when it left the lock.
The lock-keeper saw him.'

' I saw the lock-keeper. I make a hobby of these
things, you know. I asked the lock-keeper, " Could
you take your oath in a court of law that the gentle-
man in the canoe moved ? " And of course he
couldn't. All he saw was the figure of a man, with
the hat well drawn down over the face. Very well,
then, the figure in the boat was a dummy. Con-
sider, the hole in the canoe shows that the boat
was intended to sink, or at least to overbalance, and
discharge its load. Why ? If there was a dead
body in the boat, why not let it be dragged up ?
Unless of course it was the wrong body, but I dis-
miss that suggestion as too fantastic. The face,
the hands, would no doubt be made of soap. What
the clothes were made of I don't know. But it
must have been a dummy. Otherwise there was
no motive for letting it sink.'

Bredon excused himself early on the ground that
the lights of his car were deficient. ' No,' he said
to himself as he settled down at the wheel, ' Mr.
Carmichael has still something to learn about the
possibilities of life. But I like his negative criticism.
Why did they want the boat to sink, after all ? '

CHAPTER IX
NIGEL GOES DOWN

x NGELA came down to , Ij-tf- «
A husband bending over a ^p. on s
/\ ^ed to be un« g n JJ^ ^
inns or villages along the nver
distances between them .with a D £ ^

• It's a good game, she saia,
in the morning for it.'
:SgItTou ? might be playing shove-halfpenny.

*3 ^Si 1 ^** a haU * enny is an

inch in diameter.' man thrup .

^«^ 6 that's the

^ SSffSI UUe the motor out to-day and
try some of these places along the nver to see
where it was the Burtell cousins stopped on their
ST ^ might be able to collect
cences of them-whether, for example, there was
a third person with them at any stage of their
journey. You know, Em beginning to want a

person badly

83

84 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' Are you going to have beer at all these pubs ?
It looks to me as if I should have to drive home/

' Heaven help the woman, she talks as if you
could go into a pub and order beer at any hour
of the day you like. No, we've got to think up
some reason for visiting these places and asking
questions. What shall it be ? '

' Give your name as Carmiehael, and say you
want to look in the bath-room to see if any of the
soap's missing.'

' Don't rag. This is the sort of he you are gener-
ally rather good at thinking up.'

' Don't flatter, and don't put the corner of the
map in the marmalade. You could, of course,
arm yourself with a set of cheap railway-guides or
something of that sort, and pretend to be travelling
them— ask them to put one in the commercial room.
But you wouldn't get much out of them that way.
No, I think you'll have to tell a little of the truth,
Miles dear. I think we must pretend that the
Burtells left something behind— say a camera ; we
know they had a camera with them. In decency
they'll have to let us go up into the bedroom and
look round for it. Or in the coffee-room, at places
where they stopped for luncheon. You'll have to
be just a friend of Nigel Burtell's, and you happen
to be motoring in this part of the country. You're
not quite certain which pubs they stopped at,
because Nigel Burtell couldn't remember all the
names himself. Wouldn't something like that do ?
Of course you can have a drink as well, when it

isn't closing-time.'

This, eventually, was the plan of campaign

NIGEL GOES DOWN 85

1 t , It w0U ld be tedious lo record their
adopted. K «oma d out t ,

P XbK«ies viJh some accuracy, assuming, with
Set Ihat on the morning of Derek/s MPJ»
thev had come from the nearest inn above snip
ote, that at Millington Bridge. Everywhere the
unp essions left behind them were those of an
ordinary pleasure tour ; nothmg remarkable was
r corded about their behaviour. The only excep-
on was at Millington Bridge itself, at which they
had arrived late after a long day on the nver
about ten o'clock, and had not wanted an evening

meal. i
' Very late they was, and it was your speaking

of the camera put me in mind of it ; because the

first gentleman came up and he said have you got

two rooms, and I said yes, but you're late you

know, we don't ordinarily take in people so late ;

where's the other gentleman. Oh, he says, he

left his camera behind in the canoe, and he s gone

back to fetch it, in case it should rain in the night.

And rain it did, too, regular downpour. I'll go up

to my room, he says, for I'm dog-tired, and the

other gentleman won't be more than ten minutes

or so. It wasn't hardly that, not hardly five

minutes, before I heard the second knock, and as

soon as I saw some one with a camera standing

outside, Oh, I says, you're the other gentleman ;

you'll be in Number Three. So Lizzy showed him

the way upstairs, and that's the room the camera

should have been in if it had been left behind.

Let's see, that was the gentleman that had his

breakfast in bed ; left it on a tray on the mat,

86 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

I did. Number Two came down to breakfast, and
it was him as paid the bill ; I see him go off myself,
but whether he had the camera with him or no
I couldn't really say. The other gentleman must
have gone on earlier, for I never saw him go off,
and of course it would be more likely he took the
camera with him. I did both the rooms myself,
after they'd gone, and it isn't likely I should have
failed to overlook anything, is it ? '

Bredon, who was alert for any indication, sug-
gested afterwards that it sounded as if the two
cousins might have quarrelled, since they neither
reached nor left the inn together ; but he agreed
with Angela that this was very little result to
derive from their morning's inquiries. 'It's all
very well,' he said, 'but we must do something.
If the fellow's still alive, he's stealing a march on
us all the time, and may be God knows where by
now. Besides, one of the papers has been suggesting
to its readers that they should all take their holiday
on the Thames, and lend a hand with searching ;
they'll be all over the place by to-morrow.'

It was at about six that evening, when they were
sitting out on the lawn by the river, that a visitor
was announced for Bredon. He had scarcely had
time to rise from his chair when the visitor followed

in person. ..<■_■

' Leyland ! ' cried Bredon. ' Are the police begin-
ning to take the thing seriously, then ? '

' Yes, too late, as usual. How are you, Mrs.
Bredon'? And, as usual the county police didn't
call in Scotland Yard until they had made an utter
mess of the thing themselves. Let your man get

NIGEL GOES DOWN &7

away> give him four hours start .and then call in
the Yard-that 's the way its done.
' Let what man get away ? '
' Why, this Burtell.'
' Which Burtell ? Nigel ? '
' That's the one.' ,
' Nisei Burtell ? But I saw him yesterday.
' It would have been a go«.d deal more interesting
to me if you'd seen him to-day. Did he say any-
thing yesterday about leaving Oxford > '

' He said he'd probably be going down. But
that's all right, he'd been packing up for some time.
1 suppose he'd got a home address where you could

get at him ? '

' Lost Luggage Office, Paddington, that s all the
address he's got. At least, that's where his trunks
have gone to. But where he is, God knows ; he
may be in Weymouth by now, or Bath, or Bristol,
or Newport, or Cardiff, or Swansea; he's gone,
anyhow.'

' Disappeared too, by Gad,' said Brcdon.

'These things do run in families,' suggested
Angela helpfully. 'In our family, we're always
appearing when we're not wanted to, witness Uncle
Robert. What makes you so certain, Mr. Leyland,
that the young man is seeing his own country first ? '

' We can stop him if he tries the mail-boat to
Rosslare. But I don't suppose he has. South
Wales is a wonderful place for disappearing — a
network of towns, and all the trains crowded, and
the local police spending their whole time looking
out for labour troubles. Anyhow, it's too late now
to do anything but go back on his tracks a bit.'

88 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

1 You seem to have hunted us down pretty suc-
cessfully,' said Angela. ' Who told you we were
here ? I thought we were most frightfully incognito.
Unless Uncle Robert gave us away, of course.'

' Well, you see, I'd been studying up this case
a bit beforehand. I knew it would come to us in
the long run. And in hunting out the dossier of
the Burtell family, it didn't take long before I came
across the Indescribable. So I knew Bredon would
be on the case, and would have got two or three
days' start of me — these lucky devils of amateurs
always do. So I thought I'd come straight here
and find out if he'd any tips for an old comrade-
in-arms.'

'As a matter of fact,' said Bredon, 'you're
welcome to any information I've got. I suppose
I know as much about this job as anybody. But
the curse of the thing is, I know too much ; I know
enough to make it a sight more complicated than
it looks. You want to get on the trail of Nigel
Burtell. Well, all I can tell you is that as far as
I can see Nigel Burtell had no hand in his cousin's
disappearance. He wasn't there ; he simply wasn't

on the map.'

' How do you make that out ? '

' Why, somebody paddled the canoe downstream,
or towed it, or got it downstream somehow, over
a mile before it was scuttled. If somebody hadn't,
the canoe could never have got down as far as it
did—even assuming that it would drift straight,
which most canoes don't ; they nose into the bank
and out again. Getting the canoe that far down-
stream would take at least a quarter of an hour.

NIGEL GOES DOWN *9

t i, n1ir after the canoe left

*** V^reurfeU w a £*• Station, or

t "St iterefore it was not Nigel who brought
close to it. Inereiore

the canoe downstream. If it wasn it Nigei^

aP Pr g r eTyou ^ButThat depends on the alibi being
rood Have you found out whether the train was
up to time ? And whether Nigel Burtell really
caught it ? He's a bit slippy, you know, with
trains. That's how he got off to-day.'
' Yes, by the way, how was that ?
•Well, of course, the county police had just
enough sense to keep him under observation When
he went to the station, one of their men followed
him He took a ticket to London, had his luggage
labelled Paddington, all but a hand-bag he carried,
and got into a coach on the fast train, twelve
fifty-two. He put his bag down on the seat, and
stood waiting about on the platform. The man who
was watching him took a carriage just behind him
—same corridor. Just as they were beginning to
shut the doors, Burtell bought a paper and strolled
into his compartment, as cool as you please. He
must have walked straight up the corridor, forward,
dodged out at the other end, and tucked himself
away somewhere just as the train was starting,
men the train had gone, he strolled through the
barrier, bought a ticket to Swindon, picked up a
second hand-bag which he'd left lying about, and

go THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

took the one five— Swindon and Weymouth train.
All that, of course, we only found out afterwards.
The man next door didn't notice his absence for a bit,
then had to search the whole train for him, finally
got off at Reading. By that time it was too late
to do anything. It wasn't a very bright trick, but
it was well carried out— played his part to the life.
Mayn't he have done something clever over that
journey from Shipcote ? '

' Well, you can test the alibi for yourself. I
couldn't go round interviewing porters and people.
It's a pretty one-horse sort of station, Shipcote, and
I dare say they'll remember as far back as Monday.
But it's dead certain he arrived here in a taxi that
morning before eleven o'clock. Where did he get
that taxi, if not at Oxford ? And how did he get
from Shipcote to Oxford, if not by train— the
nine-fourteen train ? I believe you'll be barking
up the wrong tree there.'

' But hang it all, look at the motive — a cool fifty
thousand ! And look at this sudden disappearance !
You can't not suspect Nigel Burtell.'

' I've been doing nothing else for the last week.
You don't know all the facts yet.' And Bredon
proceeded to outline the lock-keeper's disclosures,
while Angela went upstairs and fetched the photo-
graphs. ' Now,' he concluded, ' you'll see that I
had some ground for suspecting young Nigel. It
wasn't mere Scotland Yard ofhxiousness. Who
could possibly be interested in having a photograph
of Derek Burtell 's corpse, except the man who stood
to win a legacy by his death, if that death could be
proved ? '

NIGEL GOES DOWN 9 1

u trained them a good deal. Looks mu»
£ althtd Santed tin, out In that hedge on

^,1 thought of that too,' said Bredon. ■ And
so nicely packed away in a watertight cover You
"e^ Suppose, he wanted some stranger to .fad
those films by accident, and hand them over to
the police, so that the police should have evdence

of the death ? ' . ,

« That would have to be it. Though, mind you,
it's pretty poor evidence of the death. And quite
unnecessary evidence, if only the body had been
found. Did Nigel Burtell not expect the body to
be found ? Did he spirit it away somewhere ?
And if so, why on earth should he ? '

*Yes, but we're going ahead too fast. We're
speculating about Nigel's motives when, as far as
we can sec, it can't have been Nigel.'

'What about his alibi at the other end? He
arrived here at eleven, or thereabouts; why
shouldn't he have gone up river, brought off the
murder, come back again, and sat down on this
very lawn with his watch in his hand, wondering
when dear Derek was going to turn up ? '

' I know, I know. But it would be pretty risky.
Anybody might have come out on to the lawn, and
noticed his absence. There were some men camping
on the opposite bank, who might see him going
away and remember seeing it. If he went along
the tow-path, he had to pass a whole encampment

92 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

of boy scouts. Finally, I may remark that he
hadn't paid for his ginger-beer. I got that fact out
of the barmaid. And somehow, if you order your
drinks and don't pay for them, all inns have a
curious way of noticing it when you leave the
premises.'

'Still, it's worth looking into. Even if Nigel
Burtell had no motive, who else could it be ? Who
else was there about, to come under suspicion ? '

' There were lots of other people about. The
folk at Spinnaker Farm, for example, and the lock-
keeper, Mr. Burgess, though he is not one of your
strong, silent men. He is a man of words rather
than action.'

' Yes, but what conceivable reason could casual
strangers like that have had for murdering one of
the Burtells ? '

' If you knew Nigel Burtell better, you'd know
that any stranger might easily be impelled to kill
him at sight. Still, the other one need not have
been so revolting. I admit the difficulty. But,
you know, it seems to me there is evidence that a
third party somehow comes into the case.'

' What evidence ? '

1 Why, the old lady at Spinnaker Farm was
positive that she'd seen somebody hurrying through
that morning to catch the train. Now, that some-
body wasn't Derek Burtell.'

' Why shouldn't it have been Derek Burtell,
disappearing ? '

' Because he hadn't time to get there. He hadn't
had time to paddle a mile downstream ; and I
don't believe in his coming across country, because

NIGEL GOES DOWN 93

his heart was so rotten he wouldn't have dared to

swim the weir stream.' . . ,

He might have crossed at the weir bridge.
•eLc Iv. but then, being in a hurry, he would
have taken the direct path to the station the same
path Nigel took. There would be no earthly object
in wandering round by way of Spinnaker Farm
And there's the same difficulty in supposing that it
was Nigel Burtell who passed through Spinnaker
Farm. He had just time to do it, but what motive
had he ? It was bang out of his way.

' Couldn't he have gone out of his way deliber-
ately, so as to plant out those films on a spot where
he was supposed not to have been ? '

' Yes, but why just there ? Why go the whole
way round, at the risk of missing his train, when
he could have cut through the hedge at any point,
and finished up via Spinnaker Farm, dropping the
films just outside it, and so making sure that they
would be found first thing ? It doesn't really work,
you know, as a motive. But look here, you'd
better try Spinnaker Farm ; I couldn't question
the old lady, you see, because I'd no locus standi.'

' I'm going to try Spinnaker Farm, and a whole
lot of other places besides. No, thanks, I mustn't
stop to dine. I'm making my headquarters at
Oxford, because I want to be able to dash away
in any direction at short notice. But I'll look in
to-morrow some time. By Gad, Brcdon, I wish I
could always pick your brains like this.'

CHAPTER X
DISCORDANT NOTES

THE Burtell sensation was still making good
copy in the newspapers. It was part of
Leyland's technique, perhaps a fault in it,
that he never put a suspected man on his guard;
consequently, although the police and the harbour
authorities were warned of Nigel's disappearance,
nothing revealed the fact in print. On the other
hand, descriptions of Derek were widely circulated,
and it was understood to be the ' official theory 1
that the unfortunate young gentleman, who was
known to be in weak nervous health, must in all
probability be wandering about somewhere, suffering
from a loss of memory. Nothing stimulates the
public imagination so powerfully as the existence
of an official theory ; its merits and demerits were
hotly debated in clubs and railway-carriages ; bets
were freely exchanged, hairdressers became intoler-
able on the subject, and even dentists would gag
you and then let you have the benefit of their
opinions on it. The forebodings Bredon had
expressed were amply justified. To the intense
irritation of the local fishermen, the banks of the
river were lined all Saturday afternoon by amateur
detectives who had bicycled over to try their hand
at the game ; the locks were almost congested with

94

DISCORDANT NOTES 95

did not prove a disappointment. .
It was not only on the Upper River or » the
ne hbonrhood of Oxford, that the ^search went on.
Photography has made it possible for us all, where
ever we are! to join in the cnminal-hunt ; and that
peculiarly blurred impression which reproduction m
r daily paper superinduces on a photograph has
added'zest to the sport-there is scarcely any
stranger whom you cannot, by a stretch of imagin-
ation, identify with the wanted man. So far as
Nigel was concerned, the police were in a difficulty.
Nigel, though he affected the camera himself, could
never be induced to sit for it. No portrait of him
was forthcoming except a photograph taken when
he was seven, and a Futurist sketch by a friend
in Chelsea which might equally well have repre-
sented any other man, woman, or ant-heap. But
Derek's portrait was forthcoming, and was printed
in thousands of papers, with the most encouraging
results. Imaginary Dereks were held up at Aber-
deen, at Enniskillen, and at Bucharest ; all three
had to be released with profuse apologies. A well-
known medium published the fact that Derek was
dead ; but happy, very happy. Unfortunately, on
the same day a rival medium announced that Derek
was alive and well, but had lost his memory. Which
put revelations, for the moment, at a discount.

But this world-wide publicity hardly affected the
persons genuinely concerned. What was more
serious was that one or two gentlemen of leisure
had apparently set their hearts on solving the

96 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

mystery ; and these showed every sign of infesting
the district permanently. One of them, a Mr.
Erasmus Quirk, took rooms at the Gudgeon itself
on the Thursday, a short time before Leyland's
arrival, and it looked as if the Bredons would have
to live at close quarters with him. That Mr.
Erasmus Quirk was an American, his pronunciation
of our common speech gave ample evidence. His
personal aspect hardly lived up to his speech, apart
from the ritual horn spectacles. One's impression
of our male visitors from the United States is that
they are all very fine and large, with square shoulders
and a certain attitude of domination. Mr. Quirk
seemed to be a little weed of a man, who stooped so
that you almost put him down for a hunchback ;
his face was very pale, and disfigured by a yellow
blotch on the left cheek ; his hair closely cropped,
so that it revealed to the full a little tonsure of
apparently premature baldness. Every movement
of his was unobtrusive ; his hands were glued in his
coat pockets; and— a rare gift among his com-
patriots—he seemed altogether disinclined for
company.

He was not allowed, however, to indulge whatever
disinclination he may have felt. Angela had an
inexhaustible capacity for acquaintance with stran-
gers ; it did not matter if they were boring strangers
—she collected bores. She had that useful habit
of enjoying an interview in retrospect which makes
it possible to sit through hours of conversational
tedium. Mr. Quirk had got to be brought out of
his shell, and he came out obediently after dinner.
Angela sat knitting, with that air of pleased atten-

DISCORDANT NOTES 97

ft. which only knitting can g ,ve in the inferably
rh**tr drawing-room of the Gudgeon, wim

X d L hi, -.ess conhUence, He was.

of his membership. He naa dcui v b *
Burford, not far off, when the newspapers pu Hum
wise to the Burtell mysUfication; and * . was a
matter of little difficulty to pack his traps and
proceed to the scene of action. He invited Angela
Tsay whether it wasn't just an extraordinary
piece of luck. It was lus conjecture that he might
have gone round Europe on all fours with a magni-
fying glass without managing to strike oil like this.
In the States they had a very great admiration for
the methods of detection used over here ; he could
assure Mrs. Bredon that every development in the
Burtell case was being followed with the very
greatest interest by every paper on the other side.
He didn't suppose Mrs. Bredon quite understood the
way he felt about it ; but it seemed to him just
extraordinary the way the police in England allowed
every fool of an amateur to get busy over a case
like this ; why, in Chicago it was to be surmised
that the civilian population would be being held
up with revolvers at a barrier. It was just another
instance of the remarkable hospitality you always
got from the British nation.

To all this monologue Angela paid a demure
attention, and it was not until Mr. Quirk began
speculating whether he owed the presence of such
delightful companions as Mr. and Mrs. Bredon to

98 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

the tragedy recently reported in the locality that
she was suddenly faced with the necessity of dis-
closures on her own part. It would be absurd to
deny that Miles was interested in the case; his
daily proceedings would have given a ready he to
the statement. She fell back, therefore— I am
afraid it was her custom — on a misleading series
of half-truths ; her husband had been remotely
acquainted with the young man who had dis-
appeared, and certain business friends had urged
him, since he was at leisure, to apply what diligence
he could to the solution of the mystery. His was
not in any sense an official errand. And so the
difficulty was tided over, with a minimum of
prevarication and a minimum of enlightenment.

Mr. Quirk assured her that he would be the last
person to jump another man's claim in any way,
but he would esteem it a very great privilege if
Mrs. Bredon could inform him, without any breach
of confidence, what was generally thought to have
been the exact scene of the tragedy. It would be
a bit discouraging to have to go over six miles of
river with a fine-tooth comb ; and if Mr. Bredon's
deductions had led him to any conclusion about
the precise locality that was concerned, why, Mr.
Quirk would be extraordinarily obliged if Mrs.
Bredon could put him wise to them.

' Oh, there's no secret about that,' said Angela.
' You'll find the spot marked, not with a cross,
but with a troop of about sixteen boy scouts with
no clothes on, diving into the river all day in the
hopes of fishing something up. Or, if for any
reason their operations should be suspended, you'll

DISCORDANT NOTES

99

know the place because Wg^&^SSL
boat-house, the only on o .ts k nd. ^

because of the tow-path. 9oon
Leyland called round he ^ nex ^ ^ ^

^iTS who had returned from a morning
while Mr. yuirK, wnu Anppla from the

ramble, watched them w, h Angela I
drawing-room window. Leyland and 15 ca

what looked like ph^graphs How
lucky', observed Mr. Quirk, t nat y

^ZfrOTXSZ *~ V asked

A "f iffSfSfft, -ch on my ener-
vation Mrs'Bredon, but I think I can recogn e
the stains on a man's hands when he has been
developing films recently.'

Leyland had a long tour of examination to report
which for the most part had produced painfully
negative results. They remembered, at Slnpco e
Station, a gentleman catching the mnc-fouiteen to
Oxford at the last moment. The ticket-collector
at Oxford remembered a gentleman trave hng by
that train who had no ticket, and had to buy one
at the guichet. The porter at the schools remem-
bered a gentleman presenting himself for his viva
a day too soon. All these agreed roughly in their
description of Nigel; and the fact that it was
really Nigel who went back on that train seemed
established beyond all possibility of doubt by the
testimony of his landlady, who had met him at the

ioo THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

door when he came to his digs. With some diffi-
culty, Leyland even found the taxi-driver who took
up a fare close to Carfax and put him down at the
Gudgeon ' round about eleven o'clock '.

' That alibi seems all right, don't it ? ' suggested
Leyland.

' Yes, only (as I say) it's just a bit too perfect.
The young man seems to have been at such elaborate
pains to leave memories of himself wherever he
went. There's not a link missing in the chain, you
see ; it looks as if he'd definitely meant to establish
his whereabouts at every moment of the day. But
perhaps I'm fanciful. What about the other end ?
Did you get any evidence about his staying here
all the time between eleven and one o'clock that
morning ? '

The evidence here seemed less satisfactory. The
barmaid could remember Nigel's arrival ; she had
told him that it was not possible to serve him with
cherry brandy at that hour ; she had served him,
however, with ginger-beer. She had not watched
him at all as he sat on the lawn, though she had
passed by once with a message, and had seen him
sitting there — she was not quite sure what the time
would be. The people camping on the opposite
bank had been conscious of his presence ; they had
noticed his attempts to feed the peacock ; but they,
too, could only say that it would be some time
between eleven and twelve. His further move-
ments were not definitely dated, except by the fact
that he ordered luncheon at a quarter, or it might
be, half-past twelve. ' Granted that he was feeding
the peacock about a quarter-past eleven,' said

DISCORDANT NOTES

IOI

r i a - that Kives him an hour to hurry along
Leyland. that gwes and back

th H^ you do-^eheve that. You don't

belief' he Juld take the risk. This is what I
believe ne alibi— a natural one. He

S into tt bar for a cherry brandy for example
exa ,ct y at twelve o'clock. No, my feeling » that
C U p todeven. Master Nigel was very carefu to be
where somebody could see him ; after that he
d esn't appear to have minded. I
Dash it all, I suppose it ought to suggest something.

Leyland shook his head. ' All too confoundedly
theoretical. I tried Spinnaker Farm too but
there they could give me nothing in the way 0 a
description. The old lady had only seen the stranger
from an upstairs window as he hurried through the
yard ; she had guessed that he was running for the
train, and had looked out to see the smoke of the
train later on, from anxiety to know whether he
had caught it or not.'

' Did the stranger see her ? ' asked Bredon.
' Yes, oddly enough he must have ; because he
took oft his hat to her. Rather an unusual^ exercise
of politeness, for a man catching a train.'

' Precisely. But, you see, once more he makes
absolutely certain of his alibi.'

' Then I tried the lock-keeper. He was absolutely
positive that he saw nobody else about so early in
the morning, except the boy who brings the milk,
and the man who went up in a punt just before
the Burtells passed. He never saw the man in the

x ■ T T i j."U A ;~ +V» ^ tmit^+ rnmp Hfirk

102 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

yet ? (I asked). He wasn't certain, didn't think he
had, but hadn't paid much attention to him. As
for the canoe, he described Nigel quite unmistak-
ably ; he was sure that there was another gentleman
in the punt, but had not seen him move ; nor had
he heard him speak, because he was below the level
of the lock, mostly. I asked, Mustn't he have
moved so as to push the boat out of the lock ?
Mr. Burgess, who sticks (I fancy) to his old mump-
simus, thought that the other gentleman might have
given the canoe a shove to get it clear of the lock-
he was down at the bottom of the steps, it seems,
at the time. So that was all Mr. Burgess could
tell me, except about his discovery this morning.'

' A discovery this morning ? You never told me
about that.'

1 1 was saving it up. Yes, Mr. Burgess, it seems,
is neglecting his garden nowadays, and spends his
odd time poking about in the lock-stream with one
of those long hayfork things (you must have seen
them) which watermen always have. Well, this
morning he was prodding about off the island, just
below the bridge, and, more by accident than by
design, his hayfork came up with something that
looked like a pouch on the end of it. It fell in
again, but Burgess fished round and got it out
again. Here it is.'

Leyland took out a green leather wallet, much
faded and disfigured by water, which was clearly
mfeant to contain Treasury notes. From its inner
pocket he produced two five-pound notes — it was
these that Mr. Quirk mistook for photographs.
There was nothing else in the wallet.

DISCORDANT NOTES I0 3
•You know, that's confoundedly interesting '
said bIZ. ' I must say it looks as if that waUe
had topped oft a genuine eorpse. Imagine -tot
there was no corpse-that Derek was simply doing
^appearing trick ; it would surely have been
possible"' find a less expensive souvemi : tc - cave
lying about-a shoe, for example. And even if he
had to jettison a purse, one note would have been
quite enough to leave in it. Whereas wallets do
fall out of pockets. But of course, we ve no evidence
that it was Derek's at all.'

' Excuse me, we have. I telegraphed to his bank
for the numbers of any notes he'd drawn out in
the last three weeks, and these numbers were among

them.' , , ,

' Come, that's better. . . . The actual notes-and

two of them. It certainly looks like an involuntary
jettison. And that would presumably mean, either
that he met somebody just below the bridge, and
the wallet fell out, perhaps in the course of a struggle ;
or else that that was the exact spot at which the
canoe toppled over and the body fell out. I can't
see any other way to it, unless it were sheer insane
accident.'

1 That's about my own feeling. It's not far,
mark you, from the place where the tobacco-pouch
was found, with the films in it.'

' There's a little lad to see you, sir,' announced
the landlady without warning.

Bredon had not been slow to cultivate the acquain-
tance of the boy scouts, and he had little doubt
that it was one of these unofficial allies who was
looking for him. It must surely mean a discovery.

104 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

Excusing himself to Leyland, he hurried to the
front door, and found his expectations justified.
The matted hair proclaimed that his visitor had
not been long out of the water ; and the disorder
of his clothes seemed to suggest that their resumption
was only a reluctant sacrifice to the convenances.
On his face was a broad smile, and in his hand a
small, dark object.

' Found the gentleman's money-purse, sir/ he

said.

CHAPTER XI

MR. ERASMUS QUIRK

T'S no good,' said Leyland ; ' it doesn't make
the least little bit of sense. Don't say that
the second wallet didn't really belong to Derek
Burtell ; that his card was put inside it for a ruse.
That note is numbered continuously with the ones
we found in the other wallet ; all three were among
the notes he took out of his bank about a fortnight
ago, Two purses, one opposite the end of the
island, one opposite the disused boat-house ; two
notes in one, Derek Burtell's notes, one note in the
other, Derek BurtelJ's note, and a card, Derek
Burtell's card— what on earth has he or anybody
else been up to ? '

' No, you can search me. I've known men wear
two handkerchiefs, or two watches, or two pipes ;
but never two purses. Besides, even if he did',
what's the good ? Unless, indeed, one fell out in
the course of a struggle or in some moment of
excitement, while he was alive, and the other
slipped from his pocket as his body rolled over into
the river. That's the nearest I can get, but it
seems pretty fantastic'

, ' Well' it's better than nothing,' admitted Leyland.
fantastic, but not impossible.'
'Yes, but you don't realize the worst of it,'
8 105

io6 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

Bredon pointed out. ' The place at which Burgess
found the first wallet, just below the bridge of the
island, wasn't the place at which the canoe was
scuttled.'

' How do you make that out ? '

' Don't I keep on telling you that a canoe with
a hole that size in it could only float a few hundred
yards before it got water-logged ? And that, once
it's water-logged, it makes practically no headway
at all, because it's only got the stream to drift it,
not the wind ? The stream couldn't possibly have
floated the canoe down all that distance between
(say) half-past nine and half-past one. So that
you have to make two separate episodes in this
mad canoe journey— one at the bridge, where the
pouch was dropped, one lower down, where the
boat was scuttled. It's all too dashed untidy for
words/

' I'll tell you what ; I'm coming to feel that the
only thing is to get on to Nigel Burtell's tracks.
Derek Burtell may be alive or dead ; to go chasing
round for him is possibly to make fools of ourselves.
But Nigel Burtell is presumably alive ; he's done
a clear bolt, which shows he's got a guilty conscience
— he must be able to tell us something. I believe
we ought to devote ourselves to tracing him.'

' That's all very well for you ; but it's not what
I'm paid to do. If there's been a murder, the
Indescribable doesn't care a tinker's curse who did
it ; my job is to find Derek. But incidentally,
there is surely one other person to track down.'

'Who?'

' The man in the punt. He wasn't far off when

MR. ERASMUS QUIRK 107

the thing happened. He had only to cut across
by land, and he could overtake a canoe that was
being slackly paddled, or wasn't being paddled at
all. He could get back to his punt, and go on
upstream, looking as innocent as you please. I
say, then, that (though there's nothing to implicate
him directly) he's a possible suspect. And mean-
while his movements ought to be traceable. He
must have hired the punt somewhere to start with ;
he must have left it somewhere, or else be still
in it, probably somewhere upstream. It's surely
worth finding out who he is.'

It was at tins point that their conversation was
interrupted by Mr. Quirk. How long he might
have been listening to them was not apparent ;
he moved softly over the grass, and seemed to be
interested in the view as he walked. But it was
plainly with a purpose that he approached them ;
and, with the candour which makes for the American
people most of its friends and all its enemies, he
plunged at once into business.

' See here, gentlemen,' he said, ' you don't need
to tell me that you're both on the Burtell stunt.
Now, I'm very much interested in the Burtell stunt
myself. And I've none of your advantages ; I only
know what I read in the newspapers, and' I guess
what's printed in the newspapers is just about
what you want known. But, see here, I've a pro-
position to make to you which I'd like you to
consider. I may not be up to all your dodges this
side, but I hold my Ai Sleuth certificate from the
Detective Society of America, and I do try very
humbly to follow in the footsteps of your great

io8 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

Holmes. And my proposition is this : if I can lay
my finger on a point in this case which you gentle-
men, with all your wonderful advantages, haven't
yet noticed — an important point, mark you, that
may put you on the right track — then you gentlemen
will let me work in with you to find this Burtell.
It would give me very great pleasure to be associated
with you in your researches, and of course, if this
gentleman here is connected with the police, I don't
want him to spill any secrets to me that the Force
might not want spilled. That's only reasonable.
All I want is to get a pointer from you now and
again, so that we can have a common policy, and
our researches shan't overlap. Now, I don't know
what you're going to say ; I dare say you're wanting
to kick me downstairs for my confounded imper-
tinence ; but if you've got any use for me, here
I am.'

' I'm on, so far as I'm concerned,' replied Bredon.
1 But then, thank God, I'm a free agent. What
do you say, Leyland ? '

' Well, I'm not a free agent. But I don't mind
giving Mr. Quirk pointers, as he calls them, when
I think he's on a wrong track, if he really has got
something to contribute to the clearing up of all
this business, and is prepared to prove it now. It's
not a case for bargaining, Mr. Quirk. If you can
really put us on the track of something, here and
now, then I shall believe that you're a man worth
having on my side, and I shall be prepared to keep
you there.'

' Well, I guess I'll have to be content with that.
Mind you, I 'm not saying that this fact is an impor-

MR. ERASMUS QUIRK 109

tant fact ; I can't just relate it to the other facts
of the case ; and there, you see, you have the pull
on me, knowing more of them. But let me put it
to you just like this : What proof have you that
Derek Burtell slept at Millington Bridge last Sunday
night, the night before he kind of disappeared ? '

' But why on earth not ? ' expostulated Brcdon.

' That's what I can't say, why not ; I only ask
whether he did.'

' But I mean, what earthly reason is there for
doubting that he did ? '

' Well, I hope Mrs. Bredon hasn't been indiscreet,
but she was telling me these Burtell cousins didn't
seem to have been any too fond of each other.
And she said the landlady at Millington Bridge told
her that they didn't come to the inn together, those
two, and didn't breakfast together, and didn't
leave together. Now, in the States we pay a good
deal of attention to the problem of human testi-
mony ; and some of our greatest speculators in that
line have pointed out that an uneducated person
will always pass inference for fact. Now, supposing
that the same man came up to the hotel twice in
the same night, pretending to be a different man
the second time, isn't it likely she would say two
strangers came to her inn to spend the night ?
What we don't know is that she ever saw the
two strangers together.'

'Bredon,' said Leyland, 'I believe it's worth
looking into this. Couldn't we go over and examine
tnat landlady again ? '

I'm R f L ft haVe SOme lun< *eon first, though.
I m hanged lf I see what it all means, if this

no THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

turns out to be true, but it's certainly worth
trying.'

The landlady was thoroughly flustered by the
appearance of a police inspector, and became more
garrulous than ever. Leyland began by demanding
the production of the hotel register, which put the
poor old lady in the wrong from the first, because,
like most country inn-keepers, she had failed to
keep any register since the War. Yes, it would have
been about ten o'clock the first gentleman came,
. and it was quite dark there at the door, so she didn't
take much notice of what he looked like; she
thought he was a nice-looking young gentleman,
held himself very straight, and talked in a slow
voice, very drawling and easy.

' That's Nigel all right,' said Bredon. ' And he
had no camera with him ? '

The landlady hadn't thought to look. He carried
a pack over his shoulders, same as if it might have
been his luggage. ' I'll go up to my room,' he had
said, ' for I'm dog-tired ; no, no supper, thanking
you all the same.' She had then showed him Num-
ber Two, a low room on the first floor, facing the
back-yard, and Number Three, just opposite, which
was a more comfortable room in every way, with
a nice view over the front of the hotel, so she thought
he'd take that one ; but no, nothing would serve
him but he must have Number Two.

•Instructive,' said Leyland. 'If Mr. Quirk is
right, our friend probably wanted to climb out of
the window. May we go round and see it ? He
couldn't climb out of the front room without risking
being seen.'

MR. ERASMUS QUIRK

in

The window of Number Two certainly seemed
to bear out the theory. It was large, and low in
the wall ; and an outhouse roof made it a very
simple climb down. Proceeding, the landlady
explained that the second gentleman arrived about
five or ten minutes later, and she knew who he was
by the camera slung across his back. She couldn't
hardly say whether he was like the other gentleman,
but she thought yes ; and as for his voice, why,
the second gentleman didn't hardly so much as open
his mouth, except to say Thank you. Had the
second gentleman a pack on his shoulders too ?
Why no, she thought not, but she didn't feel sur-
prised over that, seeing as the pack the first gentle-
man had was plenty for two ; very big pack it was.
Was the first gentleman still moving in his bedroom
when the second gentleman came upstairs ? Ah,
she'd have to ask the girl that, it was Lizzy took
the second gentleman upstairs. Lizzy was then
summoned, and said No, she had not heard the
other gentleman move, not to remember it.

' Were his boots outside the door ? ' asked
Leyland.

No, it appeared that neither gentleman had put
his boots out to be cleaned. Recalled, and asked
whether this behaviour was usual among travellers
the landlady deposed that she couldn't hardly say ;
some did, some didn't. But these river folk would
as ike as not be wearing sandshoes or something
of that ; and if so, why then their boots wouldn't
want no cleaning. Were both beds slept in >
Lizzy had to be recalled. Yes, both beds had been
slept in, very much tumbled about they was, and

H2 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

■

both basins used. The first gentleman gave no
orders about calling ; the second asked to have a
tray left outside on the mat, with a pot of tea and
a couple of nice poached eggs. That was at half-
past seven, and the other gentleman, that was the
gentleman from Number Two, he came down about
a quarter before eight. Did he have breakfast ? Oh
yes, a pot of tea and a couple of nice poached eggs.

' Good God,' said Bredon, ' did the man get
through four poached eggs in a morning ? '

' Might have shied the bedroom eggs into those
bushes,' suggested Leyland. ' The birds would have
got them by now/

Number Two, it appeared, had not taken long
over his breakfast, but had paid his bill and set
out for the river about a quarter-past eight. As
for Number Three, there wasn't nobody could speak
to having seen him go out. But the bill was paid
for both.

' Has anybody been staying here since/ asked
Leyland, ' or would the rooms be more or less as
they were left ? '

No, there had been no later visitors ; it wasn't
hardly the season not so early in the month. But
Lizzy, of course, she had done the rooms after the
gentleman left. Still, they were welcome to go up
and see. They inspected both rooms, Leyland and
Bredon addressing particular attention to the
window-frame of Number Two, in the hope that
they might find some traces of a hurried exit. But
no scratches were apparent ; and it looked as if
they would have to return home with the unsatis-
factory experience of a theory formed, tested, and

MR. ERASMUS QUIRK 113

corroborated, but not proved. They were already
on their way downstairs when the American spoke

almost for the first time :

' It's with considerable diffidence that I make

4 any suggestions to such competent investigators,
but isn't it possible that we might still find some
thumb-marks ? Our experts in the United States
have laid it down that, if there was any grease on
the hand, a finger or thumb-mark, even when
invisible to the naked eye, may persist lor a con-
siderable number of days. And I've noticed myself
in your country that the hotel servants aren't always
just very particular in the way they do the rooms.
Now, I would suggest, that if you've got any powder
in your kit, you might just try the carafes in those
rooms for finger-prints.'

> It seemed a desperate remedy ; but in default of

a better suggestion it was tried. The impossible
resulted ; on either decanter appeared at least one
thumb-print, in tolerably definite outline. There
was a tense silence as Leyland carried them to the
window, and held them up side by side. There
could be no reasonable doubt of the fact— the
thumb-marks were exactly similar. Both decanters
were carefully wrapped up, and carried off as spoils
of the victory.

' Mr. Quirk,' said Leyland, ' I'm hanged if I know
what to make of your discovery. But you've
proved your idea up to the hilt, and I must say I
hope you'll keep on working at the case. I'm
1 always ready to give you any " pointers ", as you
call them, within reason. You're staying at the
Gudgeon, I think ? *

ii 4 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

1 You'll find me right there until this business is
cleared up, Inspector. I don't know what it is,
but a real detective puzzle kind of gets hold of a
man the way he can't drop it if he wanted to. And
I have to be on this side for nearly two months yet,
so that the Gudgeon Hotel is a good enough address
for me. Without mentioning the company.'

1 Bredon,' said Leyland, ' you're being very silent.
I believe you've got one of your ideas— you're on
the track of a solution.'

'Not within miles of one/ admitted Bredon
cheerfully. 'But I enjoy fresh complications, as
long as they're not off the point. And I don't
think this complication is off the point/

CHAPTER XII
THE SECRET OF THE ISLAND

BREDON did not expand until he and Lcyland
were alone together. ' I'm going to leave
it to you he said, ' how much you take Mr.
Quirk into your confidence. Meanwhile, I must tell
you that I've got Nigel Burtell's finger-prints ; and
I'm confoundedly glad that I did. When I called
on him to show him those photographs, I took good
care that he should finger the envelope in which
the photographs were, and that he should return
it to me. As soon as I'd left him I took a photo
of the prints, and here it is. Unless my memory
is at fault, I think it's the duplicate of the marks
on those decanters.'
His forecast was fully justified. « Well,' said

tint i n Q' ?' eVe , got the facts clear ' ™y h ™.

Until Sunday night, according to what you tell
me the Burtell cousins travelled together. On
Sunday night Nigel Burtell was the only one
who slept at Millmgton Bridge ; and he took par-

was there too. He must have been at pains
^example, to tumble the bedclothes in Number

can'T tl a K? make any mistake ab ™t it-you
can t tumble the bedclothes in ten minutes. People

us r

n6 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

do in books, but in real life you can't make a bed
look as if it had been lain on unless you actually
lie on it for an hour or more. Nigel Burtell, I take
it, must have divided his night between the two
bedrooms and the two beds. That night, of course,
he climbed out of the window and came back again
to the inn door posing as the gentleman with the
camera. He had the reputation, you know, of being
quite a decent actor as amateurs go. The next
morning found him in Number Three — he had locked
the door of Number Two when he changed beds
in the night. He made a feint of eating the break-
fast, washed in that room and then in Number Two,
packed, came down and ate his second breakfast,
and went off, paying the bill. Not a bad night's
work. But whatever for ? '

' I may be a fool,' said Leyland meditatively,
' but I believe I'm getting nearer the solution of
the whole thing. Look here, let me just rough it
out, and see what you think of it. I'm taking it
as a fixed certainty— almost the only fixed certainty
we've lighted on so far— that Nigel Burtell deliber-
ately pretended to be two people on the Sunday
night, although his cousin was certainly with him
when they paddled down the river next morning.
The only strong motive I can see for Nigel's fan-
tastic behaviour is a fantastic motive. He acted
as he acted because he wanted it to be thought that
Derek Burtell was alive, whereas in reality he was
dead. That means he had already murdered his
cousin, on the Sunday.'

' It would be an ingenious idea, certainly. You
mean that he left the body in the canoe, and tethered

- ■

THE SECRET OF THE ISLAND 117

the canoe somewhere where it was not likely to be
found ? '

' Possibly. Or possibly he sank the body, some-
where where he could get at it again easily. Mean-
while, since there had been two gentlemen staying in
aU the inns they had visited hitherto, he must create
the impression that two gentlemen had slept at
Millington Bridge. He did that, as we know. But
his precautions went further ; he was determined
to play the old Cid trick with his brother's body,
pretending he was still alive, I mean ; and to do
that right under the nose of the lock-keeper. He
arranged the body in the attitude of a man lying
asleep— or possibly drugged— on the floor of the
canoe, and then solemnly paddled down to Ship-
cote Lock. By a piece of luck for him, the water
in the lock was at high level. If it had been at
low level, the lock-keeper would have come out on
to the nearer bridge to turn the winches, and would
have been staring right down into the canoe. As
it was, the lock-keeper had only to open the gates
at that end ; and he did so, after the manner of
lock-keepers, with his back turned to the audience.'

Yes Nigel was taking a risk. But, as you say,
the luck was with him.'

' From the further, lower end of the lock there
was not much danger. In turning the winches, the
ock-keeper still had his back to the canoe ; and

t Jf'f ' 1 thG Watcr S ot lower « the canoe

self faded out of sight. Then it was that Nigel

stood on the edge of the lock, and began a one-sided

conversation with the lifeless figure in the canoe

No answers were audible, but that would not create

n8 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

any surprise in the lock-keeper ; between the depth
of the walls and the rushing of the water he wouldn't
be likely to hear the other side of the conversation.
Only one difficulty remained — how to get the canoe
clear of the lock, when the man inside it was dead.
This difficulty Nigel solved, rather ingeniously, by
pretending that he had remembered something at
the last moment — the camera, or something like
that — and running down the steps to the canoe.
Here, still out of sight, he gave the canoe one good,
straight shove, enough to carry it out into the
stream, where the wind would catch it and help
it along. Then he proceeded to establish Ins

alibi.'

' And meanwhile ? '

' Meanwhile— why, I'm coming round to your
idea of a third person, only I believe that third
person to have been an accomplice. The accom-
plice's job was to dispose, somehow, of the body,
and then paddle on downstream, to a point remote
from Shipcote, where he would scuttle the canoe

and make off.'

' You're suggesting that this accomplice disposed
of the body first, and then paddled downstream

without it ? '

' Yes. You see, as a matter of fact both the
river and its banks appear to have been entirely
deserted at that hour in the morning. But they
couldn't bet on their being deserted. Now, if they
were seen, it was essential that there should be
only one human figure in the canoe. If there were
only one, the casual passer-by would be prepared
to swear afterwards that it was Derek. Casual

THE SECRET OF THE ISLAND 119

passers-by will always swear anything. The accom-
plice, therefore, went on by himself; it didn't
matter how many people saw him, except at the
precise moment when he was engaged in scuttling
the boat. It meant, you see, that he must leave
the body somewhere, and somewhere where it
wouldn't be found.'

' Yes, I see that. I suppose, by the way, you're
taking it for granted that they meant to spirit
the body away somewhere, not to let it be found
in the river ? '

' I'm working on that supposition. After all,

though it is possible for a body to sink and never

be recovered, the chances are very much against

it. So that if the dragging hasn't brought a body

to light, that means there probably isn't a body

there. And if so, that's because Nigel and his

accomphce-to call them that for the sake of

argument— didn't want the body to be found '

' Excellent. And, of course, that means in its
turn '

' That the body itself wouldn't bear inspection ;
there > were marks of violence, or some other marks
on it, which wouldn't look well at a coroner's

ioTftL e T» body ' thcn ' must be Ieft ^ ab °*

for a time. The accomplice couldn't take it in his

twoi.H f C ° U , ldn,t takC 11 in WS railw *y carriage.
It would have been possible, but laborious to sink

VSS r d r T ver i{ aft ™* s - » -Tid

oegan about four hours afterwards/

120 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' Exactly. All the better reason for choosing a
place where people wouldn't look. And, for that
reason, I'm inclined to think that they hid the body
on the island. That other end of the island, you
remember, away from the lock, is all deep in woods,
and there's plenty of bracken and undergrowth.
Searchers would go up the river all the way to the
lock, and would scour either bank for miles round.
But the island would be just the place where they
wouldn't look. They would assume that if Derek
had lost his memory, or if he had done a bolt for
it, he would be miles away by that time. Did
anybody search the island, as a matter of fact ? '

' I don't think they did. But there's one point
to consider— leaving the body on the island would
make it precious difficult to cart it away again.
They could hardly reach it, either by land or on
water, without being seen.'

' I know. And yet, would it be so very difficult
for them to take advantage of the searching opera-
tions ? Nigel, at all events, seems to have been
up till all hours on the Monday night looking for
the corpse— what if he knew where it was, and
found it ? And having found it, proceeded to

dispose of it ?

'Well, there's still time to have a look round.
Or do you want specially to get back to Oxford ?
If you're a strong man with the paddle, it wouldn't
take us long to go up there in the canoe, and that
makes it easier to hunt round.'

' Just the two of us ? '

' I'm not going three in a canoe for anybody.
Angela has insisted on spending two nights at home |

THE SECRET OF THE ISLAND 121

she has some absurd idea that her children like her
to be about. And I don't think Mr. Quirk is on
in this act. Let it be just the two of us.'

The river lay infinitely beautiful, windless under
a cloudless sky. The tiniest fidgeting motion of
your body pencilled fresh ripples on the cool surface
of the stream. The red earth of the banks, and
the green fringe that surmounted them, showed in
mellow contrast under the equable light of evening.
The reeds stood straight and motionless as sentinels,
just fringed with a distant horizon of tree-tops.
The splashing of cows in the shallows, the churning
of far-off reaping-machines, the cries of children,
punctuated the stillness with companionship. Mint
and meadow-sweet and lying hay blended their
scents with intolerable sweetness in that most
delicate of all mediums, the smell of clean river-
water. The stream, now dazzling in the sunlight,
now mysterious and dark under the tree-shadows,
seemed to conspire with the easy strokes of the
paddle. Nature had determined, it appeared, to
forget the tragedy and go on as if nothing had
happened. Only the occasional dredgers reminded
them of the past and their grim errand.

The island confronted them at last, a haunted
spot, you would say. with its laced interplay of
sun and shadow. There must be a complex in the
Wood of us island-born people that makes us feel,
m the presence of an island, something of mystery

castlet a o r n m th,h ^ * US ^ WC **

h wat. r * e i b f ^ ,t 1 Cdnws ° Ut in us sti11 whe ^ver
or in £ 1S ° Ia / e V he Iand ' But above all in lakes
or in rivers ; for here the strip of sundering tide is

122 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

so narrow, the unattainable shore so near. Who
has ever seen a Thames island that has not peopled
it, in his imagination, with merry, lurking outlaws,
or with the shy forms of some forgotten race of
men ? As you approached Shipcote Island, experi-
ence might remind you that at its higher end it
was yoked with bridges and tamed with the laborious
effort of human cultivation. But the illusion per-
sisted in fancy; it seemed a spot remote, holy,
uncontaminated by the daily instance of the sur-
rounding world.

' Just here, I think/ said Leyland. 1 It was
immediately off this part of the island that Burgess
found the note-case. By his description it must
originally have been lying quite close in to the
shore— as if somebody or something had disembarked
just here. There's no sign of any disturbance on
the bank, though, is there ? '

But this impression proved only skin-deep. They
had scarcely landed, when they found an unmis-
takable path through the bracken ; a path, as they
noticed with excitement, such as would be made
by the dragging of a weight through the tangled
fronds, not the mere casual wake left by a foot-
passenger. For a few yards it diverged only a
little from the line of the shore, then, behind a
screen of overhanging bushes, it climbed up the
slope towards the centre of the island, through the
thickest of the fern. Here and there was a bare
patch of clayey soil, and always the clay was seamed
as if by the jutting extremities of some heavy
weight dragged over it. Yet the direction was
uncertain, as if the man who had made this path

THE SECRET OF THE ISLAND 123

had been doubtful of his objective ; it had pur-
poseless (or were they purposeful ?) windings. It
came to a standstill, you might say, close to the
summit of the island, where the trees grew thickly,
but there was an interval in the carpet of the fern ;
a bare patch of clay, still wet under the protecting
shadow of the branches. And here, it seemed, the
burden must have been laid down, for there was
a firm though indistinct impress on the clay. Bre-
don and Leyland drew nearer, scanning the surface
for any trace of a more definite outline. ' Look ! '
said Leyland suddenly. About half-way down the
area of the disturbance was a tiny depression which
only one object could have caused. It was the
imprint of a button ; to judge by its size, a coat-
button.

' M'm ! ' said Bredon ; ' those are hardly the
tracks of a living man.'

' He'd be a fool, wouldn't he, if he wanted to rest
or sleep, to rest or sleep on a rheumaticky spot
like this ? He had plenty of bracken to make his
bed if he wanted to. No, the body that lay there
was dead, or at least drugged.'

'Not much difference, either, if Derek Burtcll
was in question. He hadn't the sort of constitution
that would stand a clay bath.'

• rv^u What ha PP ened ? ' asked Leyland.
Did they take it back the same way or-no, the
rack goes on further. But it wasn't dragged any

mus t have been carricd - Th ™sh r»

bound to say there's no clear mark of two men
toe . they must have been careful to keep the
same track. Let's see the thing through/

124 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

This time, the path made no divagations except
where they were imposed on it by the steepness of
the ground. It led straight down to the water of
the weir stream, and came out on to a patch of
open grass by the water side. The bank itself was
of hardish clay, and here, just opposite the end of
their track, they found the unmistakable indentation
that is made by the sharp bows of a boat run
suddenly in to land.

' And then ? ' asked Leyland.

' No need to ask what they did then. They
didn't take the body downstream again, to be
found by the first fool who searched for it. They
didn't put it ashore on the other side and give
themselves the trouble of lugging it across country.
They took it up to the weir, dragged the canoe
and the body across the bank, then paddled up-
stream a bit, and lowered the body, weighted, of
course, into the stream. They left it exactly where
no living man was ever likely to look for it— in the
wrong stretch of the river, on the wrong side of a
Thames Conservancy lock.'

' By Gad, yes, that was the thing to do. What
about looking for traces by the side of the weir ? '

• No good ; it's hard ground and smooth grass ;
you wouldn't get any traces. Besides, anybody
drags his boat over there if he wants to avoid the
lock fee. I've done it once myself, I'm sorry to
say, in the course of the last week. But that s
what they did ; that's what they did, unless they
were fools. The question is, can we start dragging
the river above Shipcote Lock without looking like
madmen ? '

CHAPTER XIII
PURSUED

LEYLAND had determined to devote the
next day to making inquiries about the
man in the punt. Brcdon, who had decided
to take things easily, contented himself with looking
through Leyland's notes of his preliminary infor-
mation about the case ; some of which may as well
be here transcribed for the reader's benefit

Relations living.-(i) Mrs. Charles Burtell, now
f^L h f^ J^ A H-erford, 5x3. 2 _4th

lived in ITS • """-'"-<"' lawyer. Has

n\ed m U.S. ever since her marriage; Nigel B

ZTJ°J° tHere durmg Summer holida ys and
vacations Is now travelling on the Continent of

Europe, address not known

father! ^^Tr"' ^ ° f John Burte » (grand-
father), w.dow of James Coolman, Lancashire busi-

Housfw 10 'f ^ V - W6U °«- Address Bdrnly
House Wallingford. No will known to exist ■ sh,

rXi^H'ar ^ * Burte » - "-s
ie atives. Has not seen them since infancy hut

^ ofher su ^" 0t h T ° f h6r bei "g interviewed.
thCr SUmvin g relat 'ves of any importance.

'Motives of disappearance.-^) B y death of D.,

IOC *

126 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

N. stands to gain £50,000 free of encumbrance, +
expectations from " Aunt Alma ", i.e. Mrs. Coolman.

' (2) D. might evade creditors by successful dis-
appearance ; but this only possible by secret
arrangement with N., who would be treated as
heir. This v. improbable, since D. notoriously on
bad terms with N.

« (3) Origin of this bad feeling not exactly trace-
able, but certainly increased by discreditable love
affair eighteen months ago. The two cousins rivals ;
N. apparently successful, but woman committed
suicide (drugs). Consult records of inquest.

'(4) Possibly D. merely wished to slip out of
society (heavy drug taker). But circs, seem un-
necessarily elaborate.

'Personal characteristics.— D. is reputed slow,
lazy, and unimaginative ; fond of low friends.
Talks French well. Bets and gambles considerably.
N. gives himself out Bolshevist etc. ; some brains,
talent for acting ; Bohemian pose (?) ; friends say
not to be taken seriously.

' Next destinations.— D. apparently expected to
return to London flat, where letters were to await
arrival. N's. letters were to be forwarded to same
address. Did N. mean to stay in London with D. ?
No other address given to Oxford lodgings ; luggage
only marked (railway label) " Paddington ". *

Tf

- Possibility of murder by persons unknown.—lt
does not appear D. had any violent or bitter enemies.
Mo nnp hxri anv motive for killing him except N.

PURSUED

127

Add, however, the possibility of some one interested
in Mrs. Coolman's money. Mrs. C. has a protege,
£(dward ?) Farris, orphaned son of friends, who ha?
been brought up by and lived with her. Some
chance that she may have left property to him by
will ; perhaps contingently ; if so, he might have
motive for disposing of (one or both) Burtell cousins.
(N.B. Letter from Mrs. C. to D., found among his
papers in London, expresses strong desire for D. and
N. to be reconciled, since they were reported to her
as having quarrelled. Perhaps significant.)'

Leyland had, of course, jotted down other notes,
but these, for the most part, would be no news to
the reader. Bredon, as he read, admired both the
thoroughness of his method and the directness of
his mind ; you could see Leyland's suspicions leaping
up (he said to himself) like the little numbers on an
automatic cash register. Then his thoughts turned
to Mr. Quirk, his solitary companion at the inn
What did Mr. Quirk suspect, what did he wish it
to be thought he suspected ? It would be inter-
esting, if it were in any way possible, to sound Mr
Quirk on the subject, without giving away (in
Leyland s absence) their discoveries on the island,
and the doubts which those discoveries had cor-
2 n su §§ested. Perhaps, after all, an

?Sm h m T' s vanity was simplest

t would be no harm trying. He went down into
under it ^ ' shudde ™g as he passed

buf a iSi - 1P ^ Mr Quirk was n * there,
laid as ^ g C ; garette - end - a nd a novel carelessly

ust l e t t Pag R e " d0Wn ^ ds » P^ved that he had only
just left it. Bredon p lc ked up the novel, wondering

128 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

what volume in the limited and old-fashioned library
of the Gudgeon would have appealed to the Ameri-
can's tastes. It was Warren's Ten Thousand a
Year. ' Yes/ said Bredon to himself, ' that
clinches it.'

Mr. Quirk himself entered a moment or two later.
' Ah, Mr. Quirk,' said Bredon, ' I was just running
through some notes of the case which Leyland made,
and I'm sure he wouldn't mind my mentioning one
fact which might help us to solve our little difficulty
of yesterday. Did you know that the Burtell
brothers had a great-aunt who was very much
concerned about their rumoured dislike of each
other ? And that only a little over a week ago she
was urging them to a reconciliation ? '

' Why,' said Mr. Quirk, ' that's a very interesting
fact ; but as far as my observation goes, what we
do in life is one thing and what our great-aunts
want us to do is another.'

' I agree. But this great-aunt was in some ways
out of the common. She was very rich, and she
had nobody else to leave her money to— nobody
in the family, at any rate. Further, since her name
was Alma, I think it's a safe guess that the year
of her birth was not much later than 1854.'

' You mean that her testamentary dispositions
were on the way to becoming a practical problem.
Why, that's so. And you think these young men
kind of faked their river trip so as to give auntie
the idea they were old school chums.'

' Well, it's at least possible. Now, suppose that
they have a quarrel. From all that one hears of
them, nothing is more likely. Supposing, on the

PURSUED

129

last day of their trip, that the elder, Derek, said
he couldn't bear it any longer — got oif the canoe
before their night stage was reached, and went ofi
to an inn by himself. The younger would have no
impulse to call him back ; he goes on to their
arranged destination ; and then, on his way up to
the hotel, he has a sudden doubt. What if Aunt
Alma— she lives not very far from Oxford— should
make inquiries about their trip, and find that after
all they finished up in two separate hotels ? Is it
worth running the risk, when a comparatively little
ingenuity will create the impression that two travel-
lers spent the night there ? '

' I should be the first to compliment you, Mr.
Bredon, on your very remarkable piece of analysis.
But if you ask me, I think it would need some
more powerful motive than that to account for the
young man's behaviour. I've studied the records
of crime a good deal ; and it's my conviction that
people don't resort to desperate shifts unless they're
in desperate situations. Now. when you find this
kind of juggling going on on the very eve of a great
fatality, doesn't it suggest itself to you, as it suggests
itself to me, that that fatality was foreseen, and
tnat the juggling was practised in an effort to
avoid it ?

' Yes ; that's sound ; thafs quite sound. Don't

D R C °? fr 06 " y ° U can he 'P il ' You tWnk
Derek BurteU knew he had enemies on his track ?

enemTe^ ♦ ™' W6 ' Ve n0 record of an M such
enemies existing.

' That young man seems to have lived in the
Bohemian world a deal more than was good for

130 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

him. It isn't likely that the police have got a full
record of all the embroglios he may have been
involved in. And it's to be remembered he was a
very rich man besides that.'

' Only in prospect. To murder him before he
was twenty-five would be killing the goose that lays
the golden eggs.'

' That's so. And yet it's not at all impossible
that some gang of crooks were after him, with the
idea of murdering or kidnapping him and then
personating him to get the money. You may not
be aware, Mr. Bredon, that in our country kid-
napping is almost a recognized means of getting
your living. But I can't say ; it may have been
that, it may have been a private vendetta. But
it seems to me when a man pretends to sleep in
a particular place, and then sends another man
there to personate him, it means that man's going
in peril of his life, and he's anxious to sleep anywhere
else except just there.'

' It's a very interesting idea of yours. But suppose
it's true, why should his cousin consent to put him-
self in such a position of danger ? Surely the odds
were that the murderer would do him in by mistake. (

' I've thought of that, and I'll tell you how it
seems to me — he didn't know just how close these
people were on his track. He didn't think they
were near enough to do him any harm that night ;
but he wanted to leave a false trail behind him.
He wanted them to go on tracking that canoe down i
the river, when he himself had left it and skipped
off to London or wherever he reckoned he'd be safe.'

9 But he did rejoin the canoe next day— at least,

PURSUED

unless all our evidence is incorrect.' Bredon thought
for a moment of Mr. Carmichael, and his theory
of the soap dummy.

'That's just what complicates the thing; but
I've two ways of explaining that. Either he changed
his mind — heard some news which made that pre-
caution seem unnecessary ; or, more probably than
that, he was playing a game of double bluff, if you
understand what I mean. These are pretty cute
fellows (he'd say to himself) and it's not likely
they'd be taken in by an old dodge like this. If
they come here and make inquiries, they'll tumble
to it soon enough that I didn't really sleep here ;
they'll think I've tried to give them the slip and
gone off to London. Meanwhile, the old canoe is
good enough for me. So he joined the canoe again
next morning.'

' Crooks seem to have very complicated processes
of thought by your account of them. But I dare say
you're right. And you think that in reality the
pursuit was far closer than poor Burtell thought ?
So that the very next day they caught him up and
did for him ? '

' That would be my idea. They must have been
extraordinarily close on his tracks, shadowing him
all the time— they didn't show up, you see, until
his cousin had left the canoe.'

' But there's another thing-granted that Nigel
burtell ran no danger from his cousin's pursuers,
wasn t there a worse danger still, the danger of his
being mistaken for their accomplice ? '

' Their accomplice ? I don't just see how there'd
be any. great danger of that.'

132 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

1 Why, juries are only human. Here is this young
man, his cousin's only companion — the moment he
leaves the boat, the cousin gets murdered. When .
his cousin fails to turn up at the rendezvous, he
shows a suspicious anxiety as to what may have
become of him. He himself, it is to be observed,
has been careful to cover his tracks by an alibi.
All that business at Millington Bridge shows that
he was aware of the danger winch hung over his
cousin's head ; and what steps has he taken to
avert it ? On the contrary, he has quietly walked
out of the way, so as to let the murderers have
their chance. If it is murder, he is the sole bene-
ficiary of the murder ; if it is kidnapping, the kid-
nappers can get no further with their plan unless
they manage to square him. Doesn't all that build
up rather a heavy case against young Nigel ? '

' Why, yes, in the abstract. But, the way justice
works, you can't incriminate a man as an accomplice
unless you catch the principals. You'll have to
catch them first, and then confront him with them.
And here's this besides, he may have a trump card
up his sleeve which we know nothing about. We
shan't hear of that until we find him ; and where
is he ? You'll excuse my giving the impression of
kind of criticizing your excellent police, but don't
they attach any significance to his disappearance ?
A man who's got an alibi like his doesn't want to
arouse suspicion by making tracks for South
America.'

' You mean that the murderers '

' I say nothing about murder. I only say that
these two cousins have disappeared, one after the

PURSUED

133

other, and old man Burtell's legacy is going to God
knows who. Isn't it natural to calculate that if
we can catch the men who've mislaid one, we might
catch the men who've mislaid both ? '

' I doubt if Leyland's thought of that. I should
mention it to him certainly, if I were you. But
Nigel's disappearance had the air of being a delib-
erate performance. He took his ticket for one
train and then hopped on to another.'

' Say, you don't know much about crooks if you
think they can't hustle a man on a platform the
way he'll think he's getting into the right train
when he's getting into the wrong one. Why, I've
read of a case where they changed the labels on
a coach merely to get hold of one man. But then,
you seem to be making a dead set to fix the blame
on this unfortunate Nigel. If he slips into a wrong
train, you make out that he's trying to dodge the
police. If he's got murderers on his track and

themr' Why shouIdn,t he be J ' ust tr >' in s t0 dod e e

' Yes, you do make it all hang together. Mind
you, I think you're arguing too much from your
experience on the other side. It seems to me that
English criminals haven't usually the cleverness,

of Si El? ° f Brtfcte ^ t0 brin e oft " a -u P

th'J^? n d ^ WCre En * lish ? Haven 't I read
of lE 7 M B T e11 WaS brou S ht U P in thc South

iJSsv d . you ' it,s with the

I'm onl ^ f n CnC Ki that 1 make aU these suggestions ;
1 m only a humble amateur.'

CHAPTER XIV
THE MAN IN THE PUNT

LEYLAND did not come back till early on
Monday morning ; and when he came out
to the Gudgeon he found Angela already
returned. He was plainly despondent.

'There's simply nothing right about this case,'
he explained. ' Nothing ever seems to work out
according to schedule. What could be easier, in
an ordinary way, than to trace the movements of
a man who's gone up river in a punt ? He must
pass through the locks ; he must go up the main
stream — you couldn't take a punt up the Windrush,
for example ; he can't leave it about anywhere, at
this time of the year, without its being noticed.
And yet I've lost all trace of him.'

'Poor Mr. Leyland,' said Angela. ' Did you
start from Oxford, or where ? '

' Yes, naturally I went round the boat places on
the Upper River ; that didn't take long. I found
the man who'd hired the punt to him— the same
man, as a matter of fact, from whom the Burtells
got their canoe. It was a big punt, with awnings
for sleeping out, and the man seems to have come
on board with a great crowd of tins and things as
if he meant to do his own cooking. He paid a
deposit, and hired the punt for a fortnight— gave

134

THE MAN IN THE PUNT

135

his name as Luke Wallace, and an address somewhere
in Cricklewood. I got through to Cricklewood at
once — there are advantages about being a police-
man — and the station there, after making
inquiries, found that no such name was known any-
where in the neighbourhood. A false address sounds
promising, thought I ; we aren't on the track of
some common holiday-maker. I found out the date
when the man hired the punt : it seems that he
had already spent two nights on the river when he
reached Shipcote. That's natural enough ; he
wasn't hurrying. I tried the locks between this
and Oxford, to see if they could give me any infor-
mation about the man ; they only seemed to
remember the circumstance of his passing ; one
of them showed me, with great pride, the counter-
foil of his lock ticket, F.N.2— as if that did any
good.' y

' Better than nothing,' suggested Bredon. ' By
an outside chance you might find it lying about
somewhere.'

' Yes, but who bothers about a lock ticket ? He
wasn't coming back. Probably just pitched it into
the water then and there. However, I got the
number. And of course we know his number at
Shipcote because it was the one just before the
BurteUs . At the inns, so far, they'd seen nothing

mil??* S - ? ' he mUSt haVe been usin S condensed
milk, said Angela with a shudder

chaS'i ab0V< \ S ^ PCOte L ° Ck he seems t0 ^ve
changed his method entirely. At Millington Bridee

for examples can't trunk why the landlady S

i 3 6 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

tell us about it — he went in and had an early
luncheon. How early ? (I asked). Oh, about half-
past eleven it would be. Now, notice — this man
was clear of Shipcote Lock before nine. The dis-
tance he did before lunch was only the distance the
Burtells had covered between their breakfast and
nine o'clock. Of course, there's the difference
between a canoe going downstream and a punt
going upstream. I suppose the distance will be
about two miles— rather less, if anything. There's
no reason w hy our friend in the punt should have
been feeling energetic on a hot morning; but it
naturally occurs to the mind that he may have been
hanging about Shipcote Lock at the very time when
the murder was committed. Which makes me all
the more anxious to meet him.'

' Did he show any interest in the movements of
the Burtells ? ' asked Bredon.

'That's the extraordinary thing. Hitherto he
hadn't touched at a hotel, or asked a single question
at the locks. But from now onwards he seems to
have blazed his trail like a— like an elephant on a
lawn-tennis court. At Millington Bridge, for example,
he asked all sorts of questions about the Burtells
—how long they stayed and whether they saw much
of each other and so on. It was the maid he asked,
not the landlady ; I suppose otherwise she'd have
been certain to mention it. He even asked whether
they'd been seen about together much. All this,
of course, was before any news of Burtell's dis-
appearance had come through. Then he went off,
upstream.'

' Are you sure he went upstream ? ' objected

THE MAN IN THE PUNT 137

Brcdon. 'That pub at Millington Bridge stands
well away from the river ; they can't have seen

him from there.'

' No, but there's a boat place at the bridge, and
the man in charge there saw him going upstream.
He remembered it afterwards, of course, because the
Burtell news came through, and everybody on the
river began to remember everything that had
happened that day, and a good many things which
hadn't. I asked him why on earth he didn't
mention the man in the punt before— why he
never told the police about him. He said it never
occurred to him, because the accident had happened
so far down that it was impossible for a man punting
upstream to have been anywhere near the scene of
the accident, and yet reach Millington Bridge by
half-past eleven. That was true, of course ; he had
no reason, you see, to suppose that there'd been
anything fishy happening at the lock. Anyhow, he
was positive of the fact because he remembered
discussing the matter with old Mr. So-and-so, and
I could ask old Mr. So-and-so if I didn't believe him.
I didn't worry ; the information seemed good
enough. I walked up by the river to the next lock ;
on the way I passed a rather derelict sort of inn,
and made inquiries there just for luck. The Blue
Cow, I think, it was called.'

' I remember it,' said Bredon. ' That was where
the Burtells had dinner, the same evening on which
they reached Millington Bridge. You remember it,
don't you, Angela ? '

' Yes ; we speculated, if you remember, what they
could possibly have got to eat there, at such an hour.'

10

i 3 8 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' Did the man in the punt call there ? ' asked Bredon.

' He did, and he actually called for letters. There
were no letters here, only a telegram, which he read.
It was addressed to somebody of the name of
Wallace — that was the same name he'd given to
the people who hired him the punt at Oxford. An
alias, I imagine. As soon as he had read the
telegram, he asked for a railway guide and a 'bus
time-table. He had tea, and during tea he started
asking the same set of questions about the Burtells
—did they dine together ? Did they go off together?
and so on. After tea he got into the punt and
started off downstream.'

' So you came down again ? 9

' No, I went up to the next lock to make sure.
The man there was quite positive that no punt
had come up at the time mentioned. The news of
Burtell's disappearance had been telegraphed
through by that time, and he came downstream
himself to help in the search. His wife, who looked
after the lock in his absence, never had to open it
all the time he was away. And, what's more, he
didn't pass any punt of the type described on his
way down to Shipcote. Burgess is equally clear
that the punt never came back through Shipcote ;
that is easy to determine ; for, if it had, the man
would have shown his ticket. So, you see, the
man in the punt seems to have vanished between
Shipcote and the next lock above it, and taken his

punt with him.'

' Folds his punt like the Arabs, and silently fades
away,' suggested Angela. ' But you looked for it,
I suppose ? '

THE MAN IN THE PUNT 139

* Very much so. I hired a boat and a waterman,
and we rowed all the way down to Shipcote. We
looked under the trees where they overhung the
river ; we went through all the craft at Millington
* Bridge ; we did everything to find the beastly punt
except dive for it. One thing's quite certain— I'm
going to have that upper reach dragged, even if I
lose the last shred of my reputation for sanity.'

' What about the man's looks ? ' suggested Brcdon.
' Did anybody give you a decent description of
him? '

' They were pretty clear about that. All agreed
that he looked a very muscular man ; that he was
clean-shaven, and had rather shiny hair, black ;
that he was rather above the average height —
nothing much that was positive (there never is) but
9 enough to rule out plenty of candidates. Naturally,
I also made a point of finding out for certain whether
he was alone — did he travel, for example, with the
awnings of the punt up, so that there might have
been a second person concealed in it ? All my
authorities seemed to agree, as far as they remem-
bered the circumstances, that he was alone ; Burgess,
indeed, is quite positive about that.'

' Well, for heaven's sake let's try to get the
crazy thing reconstructed. Angela, we've been
making some advances in our business since you
left, so you mustn't interrupt us.'

' I will be as silent as a mouse. By the way,
when you've finished, remind me to tell you what
« John said about the perambulator; it was really
rather smart. But for the present, have it your
own silly way.'

140 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

1 Well, then/ said Leyland, ' we'd better start by
assuming that Nigel and the unknown — let's call
him Wallace, as it's the name he seems to travel
by — that Nigel and Wallace were in collusion. On
Monday morning, after occupying two rooms and
paying his bill as if he were two people, Nigel leaves
the inn at Millington Bridge. Somewhere he picks
up his cousin, who is by that time probably dead,
or at least drugged. He paddles down to Shipcote
Lock, and just above the lock he passes, no doubt
without pretending to recognize, his accomplice.'

' Steady one moment,' said Bredon. ' Had they
arranged to meet just there, or was it accidental ? '

' I think it must have been by arrangement.
Nigel obviously had the nine-fourteen train in view,
so there's no reason why they should not have
arranged a definite time of meeting. And, from
what followed, it seems as if they knew their ground
all right. Nigel, as we know, left the lock for the
station, probably giving the canoe a shove before
he left, so as to push it out into the fairway. Here,
for the time being, his job ended. Wallace, mean-
while, had tied his punt up somewhere, just above
the lock, and came down along the bank to inter-
cept the drifting canoe. Now, which bank did he
take ? The western bank, surely, on the side away
from the weir. That would save him swimming the
weir stream. Not much danger in passing Burgess'
house, while Burgess was busy working the lock.'

1 Yes, but if he did that, why were the footprints
at the island side of the bridge ? Why not on the
mainland side ? That's where he'd want to climb
up, if your account is right.'

THE MAN IN THE PUNT 141 ^

' You forget-he had to have his base on the
island, so as to dispose of the body. He came down
the western bank, crossed the iron bridge and then
behaved precisely as we made Nigel behave. Be-
took off lus clothes, climbed the bridge with his feet
wet from the grass, took a photograph (Number
Five) of his own footprints by mistake; took
another photograph, Number Six, of Derek's body
floating in the canoe— on purpose. Then he climbed
down, put the camera on board, pushed the canoe
into the island bank, and got back into his clothes
again. He lifted the body out of the canoe, well
on to the bank ; then he dragged it through the
bracken up to the top of the island, and left it
dumped on that clay surface. He's made no
mistakes, has he, so far ? '

' Yes, one, and a very bad one. In lifting the
body out of the canoe, he allowed that purse to
slip out of the pocket. That— with the photograph
of the footprints on the bridge— put us on to the
idea that there had been dirty work at the island.
They meant us to think that the whole business
had happened much lower down.'

' That's true enough. And yet they dropped the
films just opposite the middle of the island. Surely
that must have been done on purpose ? '

' Yes, but did they mean those films to mark the
spot ? I think they were meant to look as if they'd
been dropped accidentally just anywhere, by a man
making his way along the tow-path.'

' Yes, that's better. Wallace, then, joins the
canoe, paddles it down, scuttles it, and makes off.
He must have walked pretty hard to get back to

142 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

his punt. Then he fools about asking questions
till the hue and cry starts. That is his signal : late
at night, when the hue and cry makes the river
full of traffic to cover his movements, he gets a
second canoe, paddles up to the island, on the weir-
stream side of it, embarks the body, with or without
Nigel, on the canoe, ferries it up to the weir, drags
over the weir, and finally deposits the body some-
where above Shipcote. Two points remain obscure
— what did he do with his punt ? And where or
how did he get hold of the second canoe ? The
answer to Number One may be found by searching
the river bed. The answer to Number Two isn't
really difficult — there are lots of canoes here, and
most of them were out that night, when the body
was missing. It would be easy for Nigel to get
one of them, and hand it over to his accomplice.
That's one of the things which makes me pretty
certain that Nigel was in it all.'

' I should go steady over that, though. Old
Quirk has got a quite different story about it.'
And Bredon detailed the American's speculations
of the previous morning. ' We haven't yet found
anything that makes it quite certain Nigel was in
it. We can't prove that Derek Burtell was already
helpless when he passed through Shipcote Lock,
though it looks very much as if he was. We can't
prove that there was a pre-arranged rendezvous
with Wallace at the lock ; he might, as Quirk sug-
gests, have seen Nigel get off at that point, and
seen that it would be an excellent opportunity for
carrying off his design. We still don't know why
■ he took the photograph ; it's difficult to see what

THE MAN IN THE PUNT 143

Wallace, or any stranger, could have gained by its
existence. But we haven't got the noose round
Nigel yet, even if we succeed in finding him. Mean-
While, at the risk of being wearisome, I must insist
that there are two things we haven't accounted
for.'

' I know one, sir,' broke in Angela, waving her
hand over her head after the manner of an impetuous
school-boy in class. ' The second note-case— how
did it come to exist, and how did it come to fall
into the river just there ? '

' Second part doesn't matter,' replied her hus-
band. ' If he had a second note-case, it might have
been lying in the canoe, and fallen out when the
canoe swamped. Or it might have been thrown
in there as a blind. But we still dpn't know why
he had two.'

' And the other difficulty ? ' asked Leyland.
' We still don't know who passed through Spin-
naker Farm a little before a quarter-past nine that
morning. Not Nigel, for it was out of his way.
Not Derek, for he was dead. Not Wallace, for he
couldn't have got there in the time. That still
worries me a good deal.'

' You'd better ask Mr. Quirk about it,' suggested
Angela.

CHAPTER XV

A NEW LEGACY

ON the Saturday before the interview recorded
in the last chapter, Mrs. Coolman, sister
of the late Sir John Burtell, died quietly
in her sleep.

I am sorry that so many characters in this story
should appear only to disappear ; but in this case,
at least, no mystery hung over the circumstances.
Mrs. Coolman was seventy-two years of age ; she
had been, for some time, in failing health ; she
died, unquestionably, of heart failure, and the
medical certificate was signed accordingly. Her
acquaintance with her great-nephews had been, as
I have already indicated, of the slightest. Her
atmosphere, her world, were not theirs ; she had
grown up, she had been wooed and won, in the great
days of English respectability ; her marriage with
a Lancashire manufacturer had precipitated that
respectability in an acute form ; and if her
brother, Sir John, irritated his grandsons by his
fin de sidcle point of view, it must be supposed
that the sister's attitude towards life would have
been even less congenial. Derek and Nigel, there-
fore, never visited her after they reached the age
of protest ; and it might easily have been anticipated
that they would pass out of her life altogether, in

144

A NEW LEGACY 145

view of the company they kept and the uniform
dissoluteness of their character.

Moreover, though a widow and childless, Mrs.
Coolman was a mother by adoption. Her young
protege, Edward Farris, had been orphaned m
infancy ; it was she who had given him a home and
provided for his education ; she who had secured
him an excellent commercial post ; she who, soon
afterwards, had insisted upon his resigning that
post in order to live at Brimley House as her sec-
retary and dance attendance upon her declining
years. It was assumed as a matter of course by
her friends, and perhaps by Farris himself, that
her adopted son would also be her adopted heir.
But old age brings with it, often enough, a return
to earlier loyalties and a fond memory of younger
days. She had been singularly attached to her
only brother ; that attachment extended itself to
his sons, particularly to his elder son, John ; and,
when all these ties were lost to her, something of
that earlier affection seemed to reincarnate itself
in a wistful solicitude about the career of her
grand-nephew Derek, whose picture survived in her
heart painted in all the false colours of nursery
innocence. She made inquiries about him, and
those inquiries were answered, by his tutors and
friends, with that charitable evasiveness which was
to be expected. You do not shock the refined ears of
a lady who dates from the Crimea by describing too
faithfully the habits of a young ne'er-do-weel.
Derek was being rather wild — so much she gathered ;
the euphemism awoke in her a touch of maternal
pity, and she loved the imaginary Derek all the

146 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

more for being in need of 'something to steady
him/

Edward Farris was human; and it is to be
supposed that he cannot have seconded with a very
good grace the overtures made towards Derek by
his great-aunt. Yet it does honour to his altruism,
or perhaps to his prudence, that the old lady did
not learn from him any fact which was injurious
to Derek's reputation except the fact, too notorious
to be concealed, that Derek and Nigel were scarcely
on speaking terms. It was, as we have seen, one
of the latest washes she expressed that the uncon-
genial pair should find more in common ; it was
chiefly as the result of this wish that the canoe
expedition was undertaken ; and we may regard
it as certain that Derek had not neglected to inform
her of his compliance. When Derek disappeared,
his great-aunt had already been overtaken by her
last illness ; the doctor would not hear of the grim
news finding its way into her sick-room, and the
papers were carefully kept from her. She died,
then, in full knowledge that John Bur tell 's grandsons
had effected a reconciliation, in ignorance of the
tragic sequel which the reconciliation produced.

It was in this stage of half-enlightenment that
she drew up her last will and testament. For the
adopted son, whose prospects she had made and
marred, she secured a decent provision. The whole
of her remaining property, she declared, — it meant
nearly a hundred thousand — was to pass absolutely
to her elder grandnephew, the son of her beloved
nephew John. The lawyer's diplomacy was taxed
to the uttermost. He knew, as he sat by her

A NEW LEGACY

147

bedside, that half England was hallooing after
Derek as a fugitive, the other half pronouncing
obituaries on him as a corpse. He knew that any
reference to the fact might precipitate his client's
death. Yet the will, as she had outlined it to him,
would mean, in all probability, that she would die
intestate. The lawyer hummed and hawed ; he
excelled himself in the iteration of those compli-
cated rigmaroles by which the laity are hoodwinked.
It would never do, he said, to leave the will like
that ; it would be a severe breach of legal custom
if no residuary legatee were named. Perhaps Mr.
Nigel Burtell might be mentioned ? To his sur-
prise, Mrs. Coolman was adamant. A few months
before, her family fondness had inspired her to
buy a book of poems which Nigel had produced,
in the hope of paying his Oxford bills with the
proceeds. Mens hominum praesaga parttm ! The
book reached Aunt Alma's breakfast -table ; Aunt
Alma read it. Neither the sentiments it expressed
nor its manner of expressing them were adapted to
the taste of the seventies. With a certain tightening
of the lips, the dying Victorian consented to name
Edward Farris her heir, as Derek's alternative.

The firm of solicitors which drew up the will was
the firm which also represented Derek's own inter-
ests. Leyland had consulted them long and earn-
estly as to the financial situation ; they knew,
therefore, that Leyland was in charge of the police
investigations. Throwing etiquette to the winds,
they wrote an ' Urgent ' letter to Leyland at his
Oxford address, detailing the circumstances in full
and asking what action the police would like to

148 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

see taken — were the provisions of the will to be
made public ? This letter was immediately carried
over to Eaton Bridge by a man on a motor-bicycle,
and Leyland was still closeted with the Bredons
when he took it and opened it.

' We must talk to Mr. Quirk about that,' was
Bredon's rather unexpected comment, when the
situation was outlined to him.

' Mr. Quirk ? What's he got to do with it ? '

1 Well, you see, it goes to support his theory.
He was insisting, only yesterday, that we had no
evidence to incriminate Nigel Burtell ; in his view,
both cousins were being pursued by a man, or a
gang of men, who stood to gain by Derek's death.
I pointed out that, as far as I could see, Nigel was
the only person who stood to gain by Derek's death ;
it left him heir to the fifty thousand. But this new
development alters the whole look of the thing-
assuming, of course, that the old lady's intentions
were known. There was a much 'bigger sum, twice
the amount, to which Derek was heir, in which
Nigel is not interested.'

' You mean that if Derek Burtell is alive — or
rather, if he was alive on Saturday, the hundred
thousand is his, and Nigel is the heir to it ? Whereas
if Derek Burtell died before last Saturday, the whole
thing goes to Farris, and Nigel has no more claim
on it than you or I have ? '

'That's the situation, I take it. This will, mark
you, was only signed last Wednesday. But assum-
ing that Nigel knew, or had a good guess, how
his great-aunt was going to cut up, he had less
reason than anybody in the world to murder his

A NEW LEGACY

149

cousin. There I'm with Quirk entirely. Only—
did Nigel know ? '

' Meanwhile, Leyland, there's another man for
you to watch. If there was a man who had a
motive for murdering Derek Burtell, last week and
not later, his name was Edward Farris.'

Here the door opened, and Mr. Quirk himself
looked round it. He was about to withdraw, seeing
that a conclave was in process, but Angela quickly
recalled him. ' Cuckoo, Mr. Quirk ! ' she said
frivolously. ' You can come in now. There's been
another triumph for Transatlantic methods.'

' Is that so ? ' said Mr. Quirk, unruffled. ' I
should be particularly glad to think that any little
ratiocinations of mine had contribuled to the
solution of a Class One mystery. But I'll remember
my bargain, Mr. Leyland ; I won't ask you for
anything more than pointers, if you can help me
to keep on the straight track.'

' Why, Mr. Quirk,' answered Leyland, ' I don't
think there's any need to keep you in the dark about
our latest piece of information ; it will be common
property soon. Bredon, I gather, didn't care for
your interpretation of the story yesterday, because
you hadn't allowed for Nigel Burtell being either
the murderer or the murderer's accomplice. He
thought, then, that nobody except Nigel had any
motive for getting rid of Derek. It proves now
that a will was drawn up in Derek Burtell's favour
last Wednesday, which makes him a rich man, if
he's alive.'

' And if he's dead ? ' asked the American, polishing
his glasses.

150 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' If he's dead, the person who stands to gain is
not his cousin, but a stranger to him — a man called
Farris, who was very much in the testator's confi-
dence. An old great-aunt of the two cousins it
was. This Farris, you can see for yourself, had
abundant motive for disposing of Derek Burtell if
he could.'

' Then this Nigel wouldn't be concerned any way
in the new will ? '

' Only if his cousin was still alive at the time when
the old lady died, last Saturday. Then he might
be.'

' It's not an uncommon thing in the States ', said
Mr. Quirk meditatively, ' for crimes of violence to
be attempted in connexion with large legacies of
money. In our country, it's considered to be one
of the leading incentives. But, see here, did young
Burtell know that this legacy was coming to him ?
Because if he didn't know that, it's not likely he
knew that there were murderers on his trail. And
if he didn't know there were murderers on his trail,
why, it's not just easy to account for his very
peculiar movements at Millington Bridge.'

' And there's this, too,' suggested Bredon. ' If
he knew it was his money they were after, and if
they could only touch the money by murdering
him before Aunt Alma died, why didn't he take
better precautions — put himself under police pro-
tection, for example ? To go off on a canoe tour
with only one companion, and that companion
unfriendly, was surely asking for trouble.'

' I can't say that I go all the way with you there,'
replied Mr. Quirk. 1 Some people, if they hear that

A NEW LEGACY 151

gunmen are out after them, seem to take a regular
pride in trying to dodge the pursuit by their own
cleverness — it's a kind of sporting instinct, I reckon.
And, mind you, a river trip isn't such a bad way of
leaving your pursuers behind, unless they're pre-
pared to shoot. They can't follow you in a boat
without hiring a boat, and making themselves
conspicuous that way. They can't follow you along
the bank without giving you the chance to get
away by landing on the wrong bank. No, I see
more difficulty myself in finding out just how Derek
Burtell caught on that his life was worth taking.
If this will was only drawn up last Wednesday, it
doesn't seem as if auntie had been very clear in
her own mind about her testamentary dispositions.
And yet it was before she made up her mind that
the murder seems to have happened.'

' That's true, you know, Bredon,' said Leyland.
' Put yourself in this young Farris' place, even
supposing that he's a practised criminal— is he going
to risk committing a murder when it may prove,
after all, quite unnecessary ? '

' It was now or never ' objected Bredon. 1 She
was in bad health ; if her health got worse, it would
scarcely be decent for Farris to leave her, and if
once she died, no amount of murder would secure
the dibs.'

' That would have to mean said Leyland, 1 that
Farris both knew Derek Burtell was the heir, and
knew that he himself was the runner-up. Could
he be sure of that ? Could he be sure, for example,
that Nigel Burtell wouldn't be the next candidate ? '

' You seem resolved to acquit Nigel now,' replied

152 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

Bredon. ' But it still seems to me a possible
theory, in spite of Mr. Quirk's suggestion, that
Nigel was in it all.'

' What's that ? ' asked Mr. Quirk sharply.
'Wasn't it Nigel who consented to impersonate
Derek Burtell at Millington Bridge, the way he'd
get a lead on his pursuers ? 1

' Yes,' returned Bredon dryly, ' but did that do
Nigel any harm, if at the same time he let Farris
know that it was only bluff ? Isn't it possible that
it was a put-up job from the start between Farris
and Nigel Burtell— that Nigel was really leading
his cousin on into danger, while he pretended to be
shielding him ? That he and Farris agreed to go
shares, Nigel getting his fifty thousand in any case
from the original legacy, and either he or Farris
collecting Aunt Alma's ? '

' Well,' observed Mr. Quirk, ' you still haven't
found your Nigel. It seems to me a very pertinent
fact that it was on Saturday Mrs. Coolman died,
and it was on Thursday Nigel Burtell disappeared.
Say, doesn't that look like foul play ? As if Farris
had been determined to take no risks, and had put
both cousins out of the way before the old lady's

will took effect ? '

' It's a nice point,' said Angela. ' Meanwhile, I m
getting horribly hungry for luncheon.'

CHAPTER XVI

BREDON PLAYS PATIENCE
EYLAND hurried back after luncheon to

catch the three-twelve. It was essential

A J for him, he said, to see the solicitors ;
possible that he would have to break his journey
at Wallingford on the way back. Mr. Quirk unex-
pectedly asked him for a lift into Oxford ; it was
his idea that something might be done towards
tracing the movements of the man in the punt
before he reached the river at all. His purchases,
probably made at Oxford, of provisions for a river
tour might yet be remembered by the shop people.
Leyland agreed that such investigations would be
best carried out by private effort ; he was not
anxious to start false alarms, still less true alarms,
as to the suspicions entertained by the Force.
Bredon also applauded the expedition ; he himself
had a commission for Mr. Quirk to execute in Oxford ;
as to its precise nature, Angela was pertinaciously
inquisitive, her husband obstinately dumb.

Once they were left to themselves, he insisted
that they must take a holiday. He was bored, he
said, with the very name of Burtell ; he had long
since ceased to feel the smallest interest as to the
whereabouts of either cousin, in this or in a future
existence ; they would forget their solicitudes, and

11 153

154 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

spend an afternoon mudlarking on the Windrush.
Angela had the gift, rare in her sex, of falling in
with masculine moods without affectation ; and
their day was all the more pleasant for being totally
unworthy of record. If Thames banishes care by
his easefulness, the tributary Windrush is an even
more certain remedy ; that tempestuous rush over
the shallows, those sudden windings, those perils
of overhanging trees, demand entire concentration
if you are to make headway against the unruly
stream. An afternoon spent on the Thames is
spent with an old, tried, mature companion, who
refreshes you even by his silence ; an afternoon
on the Windrush is like an afternoon spent with a
restless, inquisitive child ; you find in perpetual
distraction the source of repose. Both Miles and
Angela had been stung with nettles, scratched with
brambles, tormented by thistles underfoot, lashed
with willow-branches, wetted by sudden inundations,
tired out by ceaseless paddling, punting, and towing,
before they returned to the Gudgeon ; the Burtell
mystery seemed, by that time, a remote memory of
the past, so much of mimic struggle and of miniature
history had been fought through in the interval.

Mr. Quirk met them on their return, at about a
quarter-past six, cool, polite, and inexhaustibly
loquacious. His success with the shops had been
only partial; at one large store there had been
distinct memories, fortified by ' the books \ of a
stranger who had made considerable purchases with
a view to camping on the river ; the date tallied,
but unfortunately no mental picture survived of
1 Mr. Wallace \ still less any legend as to his previous

BREDON PLAYS PATIENCE 155

movements. At the same time, in answer to a
raised eyebrow, Mr. Quirk was happy to assure Mr.
Bredon that his commission had been carried out.
Nor was Angela left long in suspense. Dinner was
no sooner over than four packs of cards appeared
from nowhere, and her husband sat down to his
interminable and intolerable game of patience.

' Miles,' she said reprovingly, ' you know you
aren't allowed to play patience when you're on a
job ! Does this mean you've given it up altogether ? '

1 No, it means that I want to smooth out the
creases in my mind. Too much accumulation of
evidence always means tangle and brain-fag. I
must take my mind off the thing if I'm to see it
at arm's length, and that may mean seeing it from
a new angle. Remember Mottram, remember the
Load of Mischief, and try not to edge those cards off
the table by leaning against it. I shall retire to bed
punctually at eleven ; have no fears. But meanwhile,
leave me to my paste-board. Go and tell Quirk what
a handsome fellow I was when you first knew me.'

The Ingle-room was still a welter of unintelligibly
disposed cards, Miles was still wandering to and fro,
ruffling his hair as he controlled their destinies,
when Leyland looked in next morning. His errand
was an urgent one. Ever since Nigel Burtell's
disappearance, the police had naturally intercepted
all the correspondence which reached his Oxford
lodgings, but hitherto their curiosity had gone
unrewarded. There was a healthy crop of bills, but
never anything in the nature of a private missive.
By that morning's post— it was Tuesday morning
—a single post card had arrived, the address printed

156 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

in block capitals, the post-mark Paddington, the
back covered with a series of apparently unrelated
figures, which clearly indicated a cipher. 1 1 don't
deny that I had a try at it myself,' confessed Ley-
land, ' though I never was much use at ciphers.
It beats me, anyhow, and I thought your husband
might make a better job of it. Of course, if he's
taken to Patience '

1 I'll take it in to him,' said Angela. ' He can't
do worse than kick me out. You've got a copy,
I suppose ? Very well, I'll give him the original,
and you and I and Mr. Quirk will put out heads
together over the copy.'

Bredon hardly looked up when she came into the
room. 'What? A cipher? Oh Lord! Never
mind, prop it up against that inkstand on the table
there ; I'll look at it from time to time when I want
a rest. Better give me a pencil and a clean sheet
of paper, in case it happens to arouse my interest.
But it's probably one of these insoluble ones.
Good. And don't forget to shut the door gently.'

' We mustn't hope for much from him,' admitted
Angela as she returned to the parlour—' the refec-
tory ' Bredon always called it. 'Do they use
ciphers much in the States, Mr. Quirk ? Now, let's
have a look at it.'

The cipher, in case the reader cares to try his
hand at it, was not at first sight very illuminating.
It consisted of a row of figures, with no other mark,
no spacing even, to guide in their interpretation.

They ran thus :

' 912346853733200644812102181784160795482410

3712559441029152917904-'

BREDON PLAYS PATIENCE 157

' Sixty-four in all/ commented Leyland. It s
obviously impossible that one cipher should stand
for one letter, because that means your alphabet
is reduced to ten letters. They must be groups of
figures, then, that represent letters ; and they can't
be groups of three, five, six, or seven, supposing the
groups to be uniform, because that wouldn't divide out
right. I take it, then, that they are groups of two,
four, or eight. The trouble is, you see, there are no
repetitions. That's to say, if you make the groups
eights or fours there are no repetitions at all, and,
even if you make the groups twos, the only repetitions
you get are 91 and 37, eath with a single repetition.'

' And that's nonsense, isn't it ? ' agreed Angela.
' Because it would have to mean that the message
used all the letters of the alphabet and four non-
existent letters, and only repeated itself twice.'

' I recollect ', said Mr. Quirk, ' one of leading
cryptographers in the States telling me that letter-
ciphers had been practically abandoned nowadays,
and word-ciphers were used instead. Say, isn't it
likely a message of sixteen words, instead of sixteen
letters ? '

' And if it is, we can take our boots off and go
to bed/ replied Leyland. ' You can't solve a word-
cipher on a single message, unless you've got the key
beforehand. Stands to reason they wouldn't be using
any of the recognized codes. Well, here's for it.'

Their brows were knitted over it three-quarters
of an hour later, when Bredon suddenly shouted
from the door of the Ingle-room :

' The groups are threes.'

- Go back and count again,' retorted Angela

158 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

indignantly. ' You can't have even looked at the
thing. Three won't go into 64.'

' You will go the wrong way about these things.
You sit over the cipher and try to worry it out,
and of course it won't come out. But if you do as
I do, keep taking a look at it and then going away
and forgetting about it, you come to it fresh every
time. And then, with luck, you see the arrange-
ment of groups which makes the whole thing look
natural. It's the eye does it, not the brain.'

' Well, how do you work out the threes, anyhow ? '

' Don't count up to nine ; count up to twelve.
You can count tens, elevens, or twelves as if they
were single units.'

' Have you read it yet ? '

' No, but you ought to be able to do it now.
I'm busy.'

They rewrote the cipher accordingly, and it
certainly did look more promising. ' 912/346/853/
733/200/644/812/1021/817/841/607/954/824/1037/

i255/944/ I02 9A52/9i7/904-'

Bredon came down to luncheon rubbing his hands,

with the intimation that he had ' got it out '.

' The cipher ? '

' No, the patience. It was a long sight more
difficult. Leyland gone back to Oxford ? '

' No, he's scouring round the country investigating
another of Mr. Quirk's great ideas. You do give
us all plenty of exercise, I must say. Come on,
Mr. Quirk, spill it.'

With some hesitation, Mr. Quirk unfolded his
great idea. He argued, in the first place, that it
must be a book-cipher of some description ; that

BREDON PLAYS PATIENCE 159

was the only possible method for a couple of amateur
cryptographers. If it was a book, it must be a book
which was in the possession of both parties. ' Now,
we know Nigel Burtell was one of the two parties ;
who's the other ? I put it to you— Derek Burtell ! '

' Derek ! But you've spent a week trying to
convince us that they're both in a watery grave.'

' I must admit that I have been led to revise
my conclusions very considerably. One of our
greatest American thinkers has said that it's only
a fool who doesn't acknowledge his mistakes. Now,
according to my latest view both those two cousins
are alive, and what's more, they're in correspondence
with one another.'

' This all opens up very wide possibilities. But
let us have the great idea.'

Stripped of some circumlocution, the great idea
was as follows. The cipher must have been pre-
arranged between the two cousins, possibly just
before they parted, but more probably in the course
of their tour. It appeared that, for whatever
reason, they had separated on the Sunday night,
Nigel sleeping at Millington Bridge, as we have
seen, and Derek presumably finding a bed some-
where else. It looked, therefore, as if the cousins
had meant to part for good on the Sunday night,
keeping the cipher as a means of correspondence.
Each, then, had already access to the book from
Which the cipher was taken ; Nigel at Millington
Bridge, and Derek— where ? Derek could not have
been far off ; they had been on the river till late,
and there were no last trains to be caught. Derek,
therefore, was somewhere close at hand : Mr. Quirk

i6o THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

had been looking at the map, and he suggested
White Bracton, a village inland, it was true, but
only a mile and a half by road from the bridge.
Assuming that Derek spent the night there, the
book which gave the clue to the cipher had been,
and probably still was, at the White Bracton Inn.

' Isn't it a brain-wave ? ' said Angela. ' Wasn't
it a very remarkable idea ? 1

' It was ', Bredon admitted, ' a very re markable
idea. But it's rough luck on Leyland to be sen!
scouting across to White Bracton for the book,
when of course, equally, it's here.'

' What's that ? ' asked Mr. Quirk.

' Of course it's here. Any country hotel keeps
a railway time-table. Most country hotels don't
keep Bradshaw, which fortunately narrows the area
of our search.'

' Oh, oh, oh, how perfectly beastly of you ! '
moaned Angela. ' You mean the groups were the
names of trains ? '

' Of course they were. That's the advantage of
playing patience. You come fresh to the puzzle
every time ; and about the sixteenth time those
figures suddenly stand out in your mind as train
times— 8.24, 10.37, I2 -55, and so on. Of course
the extra noughts in 200 and 607 are only to make
the cipher look uniform. Once you've got the idea,
you see that it must be so. The cipher runs up
to 12 because the clock runs up to twelve. There
are a lot of eights and nines about, because most
morning trains start at eight something or nine
something. Oh, it's as clear as daylight.'

' Except what the thing means,' Angela pointed out.

BREDON PLAYS PATIENCE 1G1

1 Well, obviously the time of a train can only
suggest a word or a letter if you connect it with
the name of the station it starts from. I assume
you have to take a page of the time-table, and
find a station from which the first train or the
last train— the first train, I suppose, from the
nature of the figures— starts at nine-twelve, then
one from which the first train starts at thrce-forty-
six, and so on. It must be Great Western, because
it's the only railway in these parts. It must be a
main line, or you wouldn't get a train starting as
early as three forty-six. Oh, have you got a time-
table there, Mr. Quirk ? '

Mr. Quirk had produced a local guide from
somewhere, and was scanning its pages. ' Here,
you'd better do this,' he said. ' I never was much
good with Bradshaw.'

' Well, we'll try, anyhow. Take down, please,
Mrs. Bredon. London, Reading, Chippenham, Wey-
mouth and Taunton ; that sounds good enough.
Dash, it's not so easy after all. . . . Hullo, here's
a three forty-six in the morning starting from
Oxford. Nine-twelve — that would be rather a one-
horse sort of place ; here you are, Hungerford.
And Woodborough, wherever that is, leads off with
an eight fifty-three.'

' Hungerford Oxford Woodborough. What a
jolly message to get ! ' said Angela.

' Oh, why did they never teach you acrostics
when you were young? Look at the initials—
" HOW " ; what's wrong with that ? '

' Miles « y° u are a pet sometimes. This is fear-
fully inciting. Now for the seven thirty-three.'

162 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' Moderately important, but not very important.
I think we read straight down the page as far as
possible. Seven thirty-three ; that's Devizes. An
arrival, really, but he wouldn't notice that. And
two o'clock must be some terrific big junction . . .
no, it isn't. . . . Good God, think of arriving at
Ilfracombe at two in the morning ! '

' DI, then the next one will be another D,' sug-
gested Angela. ' Try Didcot'

' Didcot it is ; and DID it is. Now, eight-twelve
is a more local sort of time ; Aldermaston will do.
What happens, I wonder, when there aren't enough
stations to go round ? Oh, I suppose you take the
second earliest train.'

1 Miles, this is too exciting ; I can't stand it.
Let's just take down the names, and read the
initials afterwards.'

' All right. Here goes.' And it went, until the
last group was registered, and Angela, who had been
keeping her hand over the page, revealed the follow-
ing names in column formation :

' Hungerford Oxford Woodborough Devizes Ilfra-
combe Didcot Aldermaston Lavington Midgham
Athelney Chippenham Upwey Thatcham Upwey
Paddington Dorchester Edington Reading Evershot
Kintbury.'

'Yes,' said Bredon. 'Not a bad stunt, tie
missed out Theale, which ought to come before
Thatcham, otherwise he seems to have made no
mistakes.'

' Miles, don't be so provoking ! Don't you see
that this message is most frightfully important ?
* Oh,' said Bredon. ' You think it is ? '

CHAPTER XVII

MR. QUIRK DISAPPEARS

THERE are few more humiliating sensations
than that of the man who comes into a
room bursting with stale news. When
Leyland returned he was plainly full of important
secrets. He did not even hesitate at seeing Mr.
Quirk in the room. 4 Derek Burtell's alive ! ' he
announced. ' I must have a pint of bitter.'
' Alive ? ' queried Brcdon.

' Well, he's putting his signature to cipher mes-
sages, anyhow.' Something in Angela's face checked
him ; he was conscious of a repression. ' Good
Lord ! ' he said, ' don't say you've been and read
the cipher, Bredon ! '

* Fm afraid he has,' Angela apologized. ' If he
wasn't so loathsomely idle he'd have read it three
hours ago, and saved you that long, silly journey
to White Bracton.'

' Oh, I shouldn't have wanted to be saved that,"
said Leyland. 'That was all right— I found out
more than the meaning of the cipher, you know.'

' This is very interesting,' put in Mr. Quirk. ' You
mean, I guess, that we've all got something to learn
not only from the cipher itself, but from the way
you found it ? '

'Oh, this morning's been full of adventures.

163

164 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

For one thing, I called at the lock above Millington
Bridge, and was told that the punt had been found.
Nothing desperately mysterious about it, either.
It was tucked away in a curious, purposeless kind of
stone quay there is, hidden behind rushes, at the
opposite side of the river just close to the Blue
Cow. Of course, it's pretty evident that there was
something fishy about Mr. Wallace, or he wouldn't
have hidden the punt away like that. I suppose
he made for the railway— it's not far from the

river there.'

' Not so very fishy either, if you come to think
of it,' said Bredon. ' If he was making for the
railway, he had to cross the river, and there's no
regular ferry at the Blue Cow ; besides, he wanted
to go downstream a bit. Naturally he took his
punt with him ; naturally, if he wanted to go over-
land, he stowed it away in a place where the casual
passer-by wouldn't find it. You can explain his
movements by haste, without suspecting secrecy.

' Anyhow, there the punt is, with some remains
of the man's stores in it, but no clue to his identity
or his destination. However, that isn't all.'

' You were going to tell us,' Mr. Quirk pointed
out, ' what it was you found at White Bract0 ".

' Yes, I was. There are several pubs at White
Bracton, but only one that looks as if it wanted
you to stay at it. The White Hart, its name is.
But when I went in I found it was the sort of place
where nobody pays any attention to you ; you rap
on the floor with your stick, and nothing happens,
except that a dog barks somewhere in the distance ,
you could run off with the stuffed trout, and no

MR. QUIRK DISAPPEARS 165

one the wiser. Just opposite me was one of those
letter-racks they have at all these inns ; and on
the rack there was a single letter.

'For several reasons that letter interested me.
In the first place, it was addressed by somebody
who was writing with his left hand ; it isn't difficult
to see when that's happened. In the second place,
although the name was written in full, "Mr. H.
Anderton," the address wasn't in full ; it was simply
"The Inn, White Bracton ". In the third place,
the letter had been there a week, to judge by the
post-mark, and nobody had claimed it.

' Those derelict letters always interest me ; it
comes, I suppose, Bredon, of being a professional
spy. And this one, lying about in a place which
I'd gone to on purpose in the hope of picking up
information, intrigued me particularly. The post-
mark said "Oxford", but there was nothing
enlightening in that. I dallied with the temptation
for a moment, then slipped the letter into my
pocket, and left the White Hart without asking
any questions at all. When I was round the corner,
I opened the letter, and found that it was exactly
the thing I had come for. It was from somebody
who signed himself Nigel to somebody whom he
addressed as Derek ; and it explained in words of
one syllable the whole system of the Bradshaw
cipher which you solved this morning.'

' Have you got the letter here ? ' asked Bredon.
' I'd rather like to see the post-mark. Yes, the
post-mark's all right ; it was posted late on the
day of Derek's disappearance. And the envelope
was untouched, I suppose, when you found it ?

i66 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

But of course, you'd have been bound to notice
if it had been tampered with. Yes, that letter's
genuine enough, and, as Mr. Quirk says, it's all very
interesting. I suppose you've got specimens of
Nigel Burt ell's handwriting to compare it with ? '

1 Trust me for that. The whole thing's genuine.
And it looks rather as if we'd got to revise our
whole view of the business, don't it ? '

' As how ? '

■ Why, on the face of it it looks as if the two
cousins were both alive, and in active correspondence
with one another. And if that's so, all the other
clues we've been following up, the photographs,
and the two sovereign-purses, and you-know-what
on the island, must all have been simply a blind
of some sort. And the hole in the canoe must
be either a blind or an accident. And I don't quite
see that we want to find the man in the punt any
more. We certainly don't want to drag the river

above Shipcote.'

1 Yes, but you're going much too fast. You say,
on the face of it both cousins are alive. But is
that a necessary conclusion ? '

'No, not necessary, of course. But it proves,
surely, that one or other of them's alive ? It's not
very likely that a third person would be in the

secret of the cipher.'

' Yes, I think it's reasonable to assume that at least
one of them is alive. But then, you go on to say
that they're in active correspondence. There I don t
agree with you at all ; it seems to me much the most
interesting feature of the case that the correspond-
ence between them is so extraordinarily passive.

MR. QUIRK DISAPPEARS

167

' How passive ? '

' Why, my dear chump, don't you see that neither
of them knows where the other is, or what's hap-
pening to him ? A week ago, Nigel wrote a very
intimate letter to his cousin, addressing it to the
inn at White Bracton. He had reason to believe
that his cousin was at White Bracton ; that means
there had been some prearrangement ; he did not
know the name of the pub at White Bracton, there-
fore the prearrangement, such as it was, was very
incomplete. Nigel sent a code, to be used in case
of emergency — why hadn't that code been arranged
already ? It means, surely, that when Nigel wrote
there was already some hitch in the plan ; things
weren't quite working out to time, and therefore
it would be prudent to have a cipher.'

' Yes, I suppose that's sound, as far as it goes.'

' But it's not nearly all. The alias, H. Anderton,
must obviously have been arranged beforehand.
If Derek ever went to the pub at White Bracton—
that's to say, if he ever went to the right pub— he
must have looked about for letters addressed to
H. Anderton. And if he had found one, he would
have lost no time in taking it down from the rack.
You wouldn't want to take any risks in such a
correspondence.'

* Yes, confound it all, I wondered why the letter
was unclaimed, but I didn't see how important it
was. You mean Nigel doesn't know where Derek

IS .

' know, anyhow. And, what's still odder,

he thought he did know. Surely it's fair to say
that there must have been a disarrangement of

168 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

their plans ? And, if so, the clues we picked up
round the island and so on may still have a meaning.'

' But this morning's message looks as if they'd
got in touch again.'

' Not a bit of it. If it was really Derek who wrote
that post card, it shows that he hasn't kept informed
of his cousin's movements in the least. If he had,
he would have known, in the first place, that Nigel
has gone down from Oxford ; and in the second place
he would know that Nigel's movements have been
suspicious, and that his old digs would be watched
by the police. Therefore he wouldn't have sent
him an incriminating message at that address.
(I say incriminating, because there is always a
chance of any cipher being read.) No, if Derek
wrote that post card, it was a hopeless shot in the
dark. But, of course, Derek didn't write that post
card.'

• You mean that he can't know the cipher, because
he never got the letter addressed to him at White
Bracton ? But that letter may have been verbally

confirmed since.'

' Not a bit of it. The two cousins haven't met,
or Derek would know that Nigel isn't in Oxford any
longer.'

'That's true. But he might have written tne
post card, knowing that it would fall into the hands
of the police, precisely because he wanted it to fall
into the hands of the police. After all, up till now
Derek Burtell has had a good motive for stopping
in the background. But since Aunt Alma's death
he's got a remarkably good motive for reappearing-

' But does he know what was in the will ? «

MR. QUIRK DISAPPEARS 169

not, it would be risky to reappear. Besides, why
not simply reappear, instead of setting puzzles to
the police ? Besides, at the risk of being rude, I
must say I think he'd have set a much easier puzzle
to the police while he was about it. I am per-
sonally rather proud of myself for having solved it
at all.'

' Still, he might have guessed that we should have
the White Bracton letter in our hands by now. . . .
I don't know ; I suppose you're right about Derek.
What you mean is that Nigel sent that post card
from Paddington to himself ? '

' Exactly. And we're still completely without
evidence whether Derek is alive or dead. I doubt
if Derek knew, or knows, that the White Bracton
letter was ever written. But Nigel knows that it
was written, and Nigel might quite reasonably guess,
mightn't he, that with all the hue and cry there's
been, the White Bracton letter would have been
found. Don't you think so, Mr. Quirk ? '

' Why, certainly I'm of that opinion. Seems to
me it was very odd the idea of making inquiries at
White Bracton never occurred to anybody till I
got my little brain-wave.'

' But what's Nigel's game ? ' objected Leyland.
' He wanted his cipher to fall into the hands of the
police, to make them think— what ? That Derek
was alive ? '

'Of course. Assuming that Nigel has lost track
of Derek, it's the simplest way he could find of
convincing the police that Derek isn't dead— or at
any rate that he wasn't dead when Aunt Alma
cued, and her will took effect. After that,

12

170 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE

can die as much as he wants to. The point is that
he mustn't be allowed to predecease Aunt Alma,
and so rob himself of the legacy. Do you find any
difficulty in that explanation, Mr. Quirk ? '

' Why, no ; I can't say that I do.'

' Then you must be very differently built from
me. I find one enormous difficulty in that explan-
ation. How did Nigil know for certain that Mrs.
Coolman had left her money to Derek, and there-
fore that it was necessary for Derek to reappear ?
If he didn't know for certain, you see, he could
hardly have acted so promptly. From the point
of view of the original legacy, it was still imperative
that Derek should stay dead.'

' Surely it was worth the risk,' suggested Angela.
' Because Derek didn't need to be dead until Septem-
ber the 16th. It wouldn't do much harm for him
to come to life in the meantime, as long as he was

again.

' It would hardly do for him to develop a habit
of alternate decease and resuscitation. Such a
habit would awake suspicions among the most

guileless of lawyers.'

'I see one thing clearly/ broke in Leyland.
' Whatever way you look at it, there's no reason
to believe that Nigel knows more than we do about
what's happened to his cousin. If the post card
was his work, he was obviously trying a shot ID
the dark. And therefore it s still important to find
the man in the punt before we find Nigel Burtell.

' In a sense,' Bredon admitted. ' And yet if we
could lay our hands on Nigel, he might have some-
thing to tell us.'

MR. QUIRK DISAPPEARS 171

' I suppose it's something said Leyland, ' to
know that he's loose in London. He may have
been seen there by people who knew him.'

' If he's really living there. But the post card,
you must remember, was handed in at Paddington.
In order to post a letter at Paddington, you don't
need to be living in London. It's quite as simple
to be living anywhere on the Great Western. You
just take a train up to London and then take the
next train back.'

' I've just one quarrel to pick with your analysis,
Mr. Bredon,' suggested the American, who for some
minutes appeared to have been plunged in thought.
' You allow that young Nigel wanted his post card
to fall into the hands of the police. Well, if that's
so, why didn't he send it to the address of Derek
Burtell's flat in London ? It would reach quicker,
for one thing ; and for another thing he could be
quite certain, instead of just guessing, that it would
fall into the hands of the police.'

'I know. But to put the London address on
the post card would suggest collusion. Putting
himself in Derek's place, the most natural assump-
tion would be that the Oxford address was per-
manently likely to answer.'

' Well/ said Angela, ' one way and another we
seem to be about as far on as we were before '

f I know/ agreed her husband. * Don't you think

Mr ™Sr ld US * y ° U faWW ab ° Ut the business '

CHAPTER XVIII

IN UNDISGUISE

FOR perhaps a quarter of a minute the whole
company stared at one another. Then the
family weakness of the Burtells saved the
situation, and Nigel fainted.

It was when he had been carried up to his room,
and Angela had imperiously assumed all respon-
sibility for him, that Bredon and Leyland were free
to discuss the situation. ' How long have you
known ? ' asked Leyland. ' Did you recognize him

from the start ? '

' Not exactly. There was something reminiscent
about him, though. The staff of the Gudgeon
ought by rights to have recognized him, but they
didn't, you see. It's quite easy to suspect a person
of being in disguise ; not nearly so easy to suspect
him of being in undisguised

' How do you mean — in undisguise ? 9
'Why, that Nigel Burtell, the undergraduate,
went about permanently disguised. He was round-
shouldered, for example, but a singularly expensive
tailor managed to turn him out a straight man.
It was at Millington Bridge, wasn't it, that the
landlady remembered him as a gentleman who held
himself very straight ? Anyhow, that was the
impression he contrived to make everywhere; or

172

IN UNDISGUISE

173

rather, his tailor contrived to make it for him.
Mr. Quirk was the real Nigel, as his friends never
saw him. The real Nigel, too, had his face disfigured
by a yellow blotch — you've been seeing it on Mr.
Quirk all this last week. As an undergraduate,
he got rid of the defect by making up ; he was a
pretty good actor, you know, and his make-up
imposed upon the world at large. . . . Though 1
imagine some of his friends wouldn't have minded
much if they had known about it ; it would only
have been a single affectation added to the rest.
Of course, if that had been his natural complexion,
it would have been tanned a deep brick-red after
ten days on the river, and Mr. Quirk couldn't have
happened. But I think his hair made more differ-
ence than anything ; he used to wear it very long
and brushed straight back— rather shiny hair it
was ; and when he had it cropped quite close (that
was at a small shop in Swindon) it showed up his
slight baldness and made him look absolutely
diilerent. Another thing everybody remembered
was his voice, a slow, affected, disgustingly superior
drawl That was quite unreal, too ; he found no
difficulty in dropping it when need arose, and
talking like an American instead.'

' He's certainly a good actor. I can't think how
ne managed to keep up the American part so well.'

You mean his pronunciation of English ? No,
that was comparatively simple ; his mother, as you
know married an American, and his home was in

mf „ ^ ^ aS he had ° ne - impresses

Wrirlr 'V- le / ay he mana S cd t0 keep up the
American attitude towards life-that curious fresh-

174 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

ness and simplicity they have ; that was foreign
to his nature, if you like. That habit of always
talking as if everything was quite different on the
other side of the Atlantic — I shouldn't be surprised
to hear an American say that the earth goes round
the sun on the other side. He did that to perfection.
Yet, in a sense, that simplicity was itself only a
shedding of his own beastly affectedness. I don't
think he had any positive disguise, if you see what
I mean, except, of course, the horn spectacles;
and they don't go far.'

1 But you say you didn't recognize him straight
away from the start ? Didn't even feel suspicious

about him ? '

' No ; why should I ? I did take just a look to
make sure he wasn't Derek ; but that was obvious ;
there's no trace of drugs on him. I didn't think
of his being Nigel because, when he introduced
himself here, Nigel wasn't yet missing. If you'd
come in at two o'clock, telling me that Nigel had
disappeared, and then Mr. Quirk had rolled up at
four, I should have spotted the thing at once. As
it was, he got the start of you ; he was already
established here before you came. The human mind
doesn't solve problems until they have been set.'

' He took big risks in coming here.'

' Ah, but he had no notion I was here, you see.
I was out when he arrived, and it was too late to
draw back when Angela introduced us. As I say,
I had a slight thrill of recognition, but I bottled it
up — I always do. Of course, somebody coming out
from Oxford might have recognized him, but it
wasn't likely ; Oxford's all down by now. And as

IN UNDISGUISE

175

for the staff of the hotel, they never notice that

kind of thing. Business, to them, is an endless

succession of strange faces ; consequently no one

face calls for remark.'

' What gave you the notion that something was
wrong ? '

' Why, I believe the first thing was when he told
Angela it was lucky I was such a good photographer.
What did he know about it ? It puzzled me.
Then, you remember, there was that business of
the note-case.'

' Which note-case ? The one at the island or
the one the scouts found ? '

' The one the scouts found. Of course, it was
nonsense supposing that Derek Burtell carried two
purses. That meant that one or the other was a
fraud, a blind. It seemed natural to suppose that
it was the one with the visiting-card in it. The
visiting-card had so obviously been put there. Now,
the curious thing was that those scouts had been
diving in that precise spot from Monday till Sat-
urday, but it wasn't till Saturday they came across
the note-case. Was it possible, I asked myself,
that the note-case had been dropped in calmly
overnight ? If so, who had dropped it ? Then I
remembered that Mr. Quirk had been anxious to
know the precise spot where the canoe was found
and that he had gone out for a walk there the even-
ing before. I wanted to know more about Mr. Quirk.'

Thank God that riddle's solved. It was driving
me crazy. °

' I still didn't feel certain that Mr. Quirk was
Nigel. I toyed with the idea that he was some

176 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

American friend whom Nigel had put on to watch
me. I'd only seen Nigel for quite a short time, you
must remember, and in a rather dark room. But
my suspicions were aroused, and I thought it would
be a good thing to watch Mr. Quirk pretty closely,
and give him his head. Though I never dared to
credit him with the audacity which he proceeded
to show.'

' You mean all that business about Millington
Bridge — the one cousin sleeping in the two rooms ?
Yes, it was pretty bold. Why did he give us such
a big slice of the truth ? '

' Oh, I've no doubt as to his primary object. He
wanted us to take him into his confidence, so that
he could keep a watch on what we were doing.
And in order to do that, he felt he must put up some
sensational bit of detective work, to make us value
his help. But I'm not quite so sure about his
giving us a slice of the truth.'

' Surely you don't believe that both cousins slept
at Millington Bridge that night ? '

' Well, we've no positive evidence about it except
the finger-marks on the decanters. And those, of
course, Nigel himself had just made, while we were
looking at the window-frames.'

' Good Lord ! My opinion of Mr. Quirk as a
detective is going down ; but I am beginning to
think highly of him as a criminal.'

' It was a bad mistake he made, though. Of
course, I never believed that those marks had been
on the decanter the best part of a week. Grease I
Why, he would have had to use plaster of Paris.
I wonder that took you in, Ley land.'

IN UNDISGUISE

177

'It all depends on whether you're expecting a
thing like that or not. I was perfectly taken in
by Mr. Quirk, and I never dreamt that he could have
made the finger-marks.'

4 Anyhow, as I say, he made a mistake. Because,
as you know, I had got the print of Nigel Burtell's
finger and thumb, and that told me exactly who
Mr. Quirk was. All Saturday and Sunday, while
you were away, I kept a keen eye on his movements.
What worried me was the man's audacity in coming
to the very inn where I was staying. Then I found
the book he'd been reading, Warren's Ten Thousand
a Year. If you've ever been old-fashioned enough to
read that story, you will remember that the solicitors
in it are Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap.
That showed me where he'd taken the name from.
And that showed me that he'd come to the Gudgeon
quite carelessly, without even going to the trouble
of inventing an alias before his arrival. In a word,
he didn't know I was at the Gudgeon at all — he had
simply come there to watch proceedings. He wasn't
expecting the hotel people to ask him his name.'

' Yes, that's pretty smart work. But why didn't
you let on to me, if you don't mind my asking ? '

' Well, on the Saturday and Sunday you weren't
there, anyhow. And I'm afraid I must confess that
I thought you might want to arrest him straight
away, and spoil the little game I was playing with
him. Have you ever noticed what happens if you
catch sight of a rabbit before it catches sight of
you, even at close quarters? If you stand abso-
lutely still, the rabbit goes on feeding quite happily,
and you can watch it for a long time. I enjoy

178 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

doing that ; I enjoyed doing the same thing with
Mr. Quirk. I loved watching the skill with which
Nigel Burtell posed as Mr. Quirk, and remembering
the equal skill with which Mr. Quirk used to pose
as Nigel Burtell. As long as you and I made no move,
he wouldn't run away ; he was too vain for that.
But the next day, yesterday, I confess that I did take
liberties with you. I let Mr. Quirk go up to London.'
' To London ? '

' Yes, by the three-twelve, and back by the four
forty-five. That's what he did when he went over
to Oxford. I had misgivings about the whole
thing ; it seemed as if he might be doing a bolt.
But somehow I felt convinced that he wouldn't
bolt now, because his game wasn't fully played yet.
He now had to create evidence, you see, that Derek
didn't die before Aunt Alma. So I risked letting
him go away and manufacture his evidence. You d
have looked a pretty good fool if he had got away,
because he was travelling on your train.'

' Confound you, I wish you wouldn't take these

« Loyalty to employers, you see. You want to
find a murderer. I want to find out whether there s
a corpse. For that purpose, it was worth while
giving Nigel his head. If I hadn't, we should
never have known anything about White Bracton.
' What do we know about White Bracton ?
< Why, that on Monday night Nigel addressed a
letter to Derek at the inn there. In fact we know
for certain that Nigel, on Monday night, still believed
his cousin to be alive, and believed he knew his
address. That shows there was some hanky-panKy

IN UNDISGUISE

179

about Nigel's actions, and also about Derek's inten-
tions. When Angela has finished soothing the
fevered brow, I hope to find out what.'

* It will be queer to hear Mr. Quirk not talking
American.'

' It will be queer to think of him as not being an
American. What an excellent disguise it was, after
all ! If we meet one of our own fellow-countrymen,
a stranger, at an inn or in a railway-carriage, it is
our instinct to want to know everything about
him — what part of the country he comes from,
what is his business, and so on. But an American
we take for granted. We don't want to hear what
part of his country he comes from, because we know
that we couldn't place it on the map within a thou-
sand miles. We are terrified of hearing all about
his business. He is so ready to impart information
that we never ask him questions.'

' Bredon, we're beating about the bush. What
each of us really wants to ask the other is whether
he thinks Nigel Burtell is a murderer— or at least,
a murderer's accomplice. You say Nigel didn't
know where Derek was on Monday night, or he
wouldn't have written a letter to him at White
Bracton. But you see as clearly as I do that it
might all be part of his alibi ; that he may have
deliberately written that letter, and then deliberately
led us on to find it, in the hopes of persuading us
that he was entirely ignorant of his cousin's death.
Nigel BurteU is going to tell us his story— at least,
if he doesn't want to we shall find means to make
lum. But what we both want to know is whether
the story he means to tell us is a true one.'

i8o THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' Personally, I'm waiting to see what it is before
I start wondering whether it's true. But I'll tell
you this much. I believe the late Mr. Quirk was
right when he said that it's no good trying to prove
Nigel was the murderer's accomplice until we can
find the murderer. Unless we do that, Nigel will
always be able to profess ignorance of what hap-
pened. His alibi, you see, remains good. A canoe
with a hole that size in it can't have drifted down-
stream in the given time ; therefore it was pro-
pelled downstream ; Nigel didn't do that, because
he was on the nine-fourteen train ; therefore some-
body else did it ; either Derek Burtell, still alive, or
else a third person. And that third person must be
found before we can definitely prove how Derek died,
or indeed (for that matter) whether Derek is dead.'

' I never quite see why you lay so much stress
on the question of the boat's drifting. Surely even
without that the alibi would be good— look at the
time it must have taken, even if Derek was already
dead, to photograph his corpse and lug it up on to
the island.'

' I'm not so sure. It was quick work, of course,
but the train, you found, wasn't actually dead on
time. I'll tell you what, when we've heard Nigel
Burtell's story, we might do worse than spend part of
to-morrow trying to reconstruct the thing. We'll go
up to Shipcote Lock, and you can act as the dummy
corpse while I see how long it takes to do the trick.

' I was thinking of going and asking for an inter-
view with Mr. Fairis.'

'No need. He can't afford to ^ bolt, anyhow.

Hullo, Angela, how's the patient ? -

CHAPTER XIX

THE STORY NIGEL TOLD

NIGEL'S trouble proved to be something
more serious than a common fainting-fit.
It was a heart attack, which demanded
a visit from the doctor, and its inevitable sequel —
the prescription of ' a few days in bed '. Leyland
was delighted at this turn of affairs. He had an
intense horror of making unnecessary arrests, of
putting suspects in prison and letting them out again
with apologies. Nothing was so repellent to his
professional pride. Yet it would have been difficult
to avoid taking out a warrant against Nigel, so
clever had been his manoeuvres, so widely had his
description been circulated. In bed, and with his
clothes removed under some hospital pretext, Nigel
was as good as arrested ; the invalid is, for all
practical purposes, a jail-bird. It was not, however,
till the morning after his seizure that he was allowed
to give any account of himself.

' I think I ought to warn you, Mr. Burtell,' Ley-
land began, * that, though no arrest has b*een made,
I mean to make notes of your story, and shall be
prepared to produce them in case of emergency.'

' Yes, rather,' said the sick man. ' I'm hanged
if I know whether I'm a criminal or not, you see.
The situation has got so complicated. I think I

181

182 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

should find it easiest if you just let me tell the story
my own way, and don't interrupt me till afterwards.

' You know, of course, that Derek and I weren't
on very good terms. There was a woman — but I
expect you've heard all about that. Anyhow, I was
rather surprised at getting a visit from him the
other day, suggesting that I should go out with
him in a canoe up the river. He explained why ;
Aunt Alma, he said, was beginning to sit up and
take notice of the fact that she had great-nephews,
and was wishing that we could hit it off better.
If I was willing, he would come down to Oxford and
meet me ; I would have a boat ready, and we would
go up to Cricklade, making the best of a bad job,
and tell Aunt Alma about it afterwards. I agreed,
only I was doubtful about being able to finish the
journey before my Viva. He pointed out that I
could go ashore anywhere I liked, if we were pressed
for time. Actually, I had made a mistake about
my Viva, and expected it a day earlier than it
came.

' It was a queer journey, one way and another,
but there's no need to describe it in detail. For a
good deal of the time, Derek wasn't worth talking
to ; he'd brought some of his drug with him, the
silly ass, and he took it at intervals. Once he let
me try some, and it pretty well laid me out-
beastly, I thought it. But, what was much more
important, in the course of the journey he explained
to me a plan he'd got for saving his financial posi-
tion, with or without Aunt Alma. He was sick
of London, he said, and the fellows he met in Lon-
don ; he wanted to emigrate somewhere, and start

THE STORY NIGEL TOLD 183

afresh. Only he'd no intention of starting penniless ;
and that's what he'd have to do if things went on
as they were. But why shouldn't he, instead of
emigrating in the ordinary way, simply manage to
disappear ? If he did that, his death would be
presumed after a time, and the beastly Insurance
Company would have to pay up ; the fifty thousand
would remain safely in the family.

' Only, as he explained to me with some candour,
a confederate was necessary to the plan, and that
confederate had got to be myself. In three years'
time the fifty thousand would come to me, and I
could borrow in the meanwhile on the strength of
it. He suggested, then, that he should disappear,
and I should automatically become my grandfather's
heir ; we were to go halves in all the profits that
resulted. He didn't (he was kind enough to explain)
trust me a yard. But this agreement, once made,
I should necessarily have to keep ; if I tried to
play him false, he could simply reappear and, with
some loss of dignity, expose me. He intimated
that this was my only chance of seeing the colour
of the legacy ; he was quite determined not to die
before he was twenty-five, and so leave the field
open to me ; sooner than that, he would turn
teetotaller.

' I had no moral scruples about the suggestion,
but I hesitated a little at the idea of breaking the
law in order to enrich a fellow like Derek. But
it appealed to my pocket, and it appealed to my
sense of adventure. We struck the bargain, and
then he began to talk to me about the details.
This canoe trip, he said, was providential ; it was

1 84 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

quite easy to disappear when you went out on the
river, and the police would drag it for a fortnight,
and then say you were dead. I said I thought
most bodies of people drowned in the Thames were
recovered, but he assured me there would be no
difficulty so far as that was concerned. And I must
say he had worked out the plan very ingeniously.
That was the extraordinary thing, because Derek,
you know, was always a bit of a chump. I think
it was that dope he used to take which had given
him the idea ; while its effect lasted, it really made
Derek quite lively, and his brain worked like a
two-year-old.

' The great trouble about disappearing, he said,
was that you couldn't actually hide in a haystack ;
you must still go about and meet people, but of
course under an alias. And the difficulty of an
alias was that it began just where your old self
left off — Derek Burtell disappeared, if you see what
I mean, and immediately Mr. X came into existence.
A clever detective would spot that ; would connect
the facts and put two and two together. To avoid
that difficulty, you must make your alias overlap
with your real self. Mr. X must come into existence
at least a day before Derek Burtell disappeared.
You see the idea ? And he had a sound way of
working the scheme. When we reached our last
stage, at Millington Bridge, I was to go up to the
inn twice in succession, pretending to be two
different people ; I was to sleep in two beds, wash
in two basins, get through two breakfasts, and pay
two bills. So that everybody "would take it for
granted we had both slept at Millington Bridge.

THE STORY NIGEL TOLD

185

Meanwhile, he would totter off to White Braeton,
a mile or two away, and establish himself there as
a Mr. H. Anderton, a commercial traveller, or some-
thing of that sort. (He wasn't sure, he said,
whether we shouldn't finish up on a Sunday, and
if we did, of course it wouldn't look well to be a
commercial.) The point of the plan was that Mr.
Anderton would come into existence on (say)
Sunday night, and Derek Burtcll wouldn't disappear
till Monday. Who would be likely to connect the
two, when everybody assumed that Derek Burtell
spent the night at Millington Bridge, and we could
prove that Mr. Anderton spent it at White Braeton ?

' All that we carried out. I left him at Millington
Bridge, and did the two-headed man trick, while
he sloped oft. Next morning he met me a little
way down below the bridge, and asked me if it
had all gone off all right. White Braeton, he said,
was a pretty putrid hole, but he got a shake-down
at the inn ; still, he felt awfully sleepy. So we
went on down to Shipcote Lock ; it was still quite
early in the morning, and there was nobody about
much, though we passed one man in a punt.'
, ' Excu se me one moment,' Bredon interrupted,
but did you really take a photograph of Burgess,
the lock-keeper ? ' to

' Of course I did. You showed it me, didn't you ?
ine last one that came out on that spool ; the other
two were fogged.'

! ?*? y° u never ex P° s e the last two, then ? '
1 didn't, but Derek may have. You see, while
ve were in the lock, just when I was going off to
the station. Derek shouted up that I might as well

13

186 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

leave him the camera, and then he could finish up
the spool if he saw anything worth taking. So I
gave it him.'

' You're contradicting, aren't you, what you told
me at Oxford — that you must have dropped the
films near the station ? '

* Yes. I thought it best to say that, because I
couldn't imagine how the films got there, and I
thought it might lead to awkward inquiries.'

' One more question before you go on. Did you
throw the camera down, or did you go down the
steps and hand it to your cousin ? '

' Went down and handed it to him. Derek
couldn't catch for nuts. Then he pushed off from
the bottom of the steps, and I crossed the weir
bridge and took the path for the station. We had
agreed that I must have a perfect alibi, so that I
should know nothing about his disappearance. I
got the exact time from the lock-keeper. I looked
round to see somebody on the way to the station,
so that he could swear to me. But there was no-
body ; and so — it was a suggestion Derek had made
—I cut through the hedge on my left, and went
through a sort of farm place that was quite out of
my way, really — there were certain to be people
about there, Derek said. I only saw one old lady
in a top window, but I took off my hat to her, so
that she'd remember my passing through.

1 1 had dawdled purposely, so as to be able to
catch the train at the last moment ; that was
another of Derek's ideas. If I travelled without a
ticket, he said, I could own up to the man at the
barrier in Oxford station, and he'd have to sell

THE STORY NIGEL TOLD 187

me a ticket, so he'd remember about it afterwards,
and cover my alibi. That worked out all right.
Then, of course, my Viva was going to cover the
next stage of the proceedings. That didn't come
off, but I took a taxi out here, and asked for a
drink so that I could have an argument about the
time with the barmaid. That covered the other
end of my alibi, you see.

'Then I had to sit down and wait— we hadn't
intended, of course, that I should have so long to
wait— that was due to the mistake about the Viva.
The arrangement was that at about half-past one
I should be somewhere near the disused boat-house ;
the canoe, we calculated, ought to be somewhere
near there by then. I left Derek to arrange that
as he thought best ; he was to give the impression,
as best he could, that he'd fallen into the river
with a heart-attack, that the canoe had been
swamped, and so on.

' Well, I did the agitated part all right, and took
a man from here with me so as to have a witness
when I found the canoe. It came up to time
splendidly, and the man got it in to shore, then
started diving to see if he could find Derek any-
where. While he was doing that, I found a beastly
hole in the bottom of the canoe, as I was trying
to right it. That annoyed me, because I assumed
that Derek had done it as the simplest way of
swamping the boat, forgetting, the silly chump,
tnat people would ask questions about it after-

I? ♦ *J hj ? WaS the first thin 6 that went " rron g
about the plan.

' But the next thing was much worse.. We had

188 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

agreed that he was to send a letter to me as soon
as he got home to White Bracton — that would be
about ten o'clock in the morning, and it ought to
arrive the same night. I was to write to him from
my digs just to confirm the fact that everything
had gone off all right. Afterwards, there was to
be no correspondence, for fear my letters should be
watched. Now, when I got home that night, there
was no letter waiting for me. So I thought out a
cipher, and wrote it off to " H. Anderton ", thinking
that it might be easier for him to send messages
that way, through the papers if necessary. But
next morning there was still no letter from White
Bracton. I began to get alarmed, and yet I could
do nothing without attracting suspicion. And so
it went on from one day to the next ; no message
from Derek, and no prescriptions about what I
should do.

'You don't know, probably, what the end of
term's like at Oxford— the end of one's last term,
I mean. There's a sickening feeling of being at
a loose end that makes you want to go away and
die somewhere. All that ridiculous aesthetic busi-
ness looks so empty and pointless when you've got
to go down ; it felt like being in a theatre when
you've lost your hat at the end of a play, and
they're all turning down the lights. Its effect on
me was that I wanted to cut adrift from the whole
business and start again on a fresh tack ; I suppose
it was a kind of conversion. ... If Derek was
going out to the Colonies, why shouldn't I ? And
then in a flash the thought occurred to me: il
Derek was going to disappear, why shouldn t 1 «

THE STORY NIGEL TOLD 189

' I didn't know then that my own movements had
aroused any suspicion. I wanted to keep near the
scene of action, but staying in Oxford, with .ill
that mockery of a past behind me, was too much.
Why shouldn't I fade off into the surrounding
country somewhere, and become a fresh person for
a bit ? There was no need to disguise myself ;
I had only to drop a disguise. It might be safer,
perhaps, to pose as an American ; I've lived so
much in the States that the impersonation was
hardly any effort to me. I thought of this pub,
which had seemed rather comfortable ; I was sure
they wouldn't recognize me with my hair cut short
and all the rest of it. I determined to do it. Fortu-
nately I'd lots of cash in hand, because I'd been
meaning to travel on the Continent, and hadn't
yet booked my passage. I would let my luggage
go up to London without me, and disappear into
the blue by the next train, a few minutes later.
It all seemed to work without a hitch. At the
last moment I got the impression that somebody
was watching me ; so I was very careful to skip
off while he wasn't looking.

' The train journey was a simple one— I expect
you've worked it out for yourselves. Change plat-
forms at Swindon, then double back by a slow train
to Faringdon, and you're within a 'bus ride from
here. On my way I called at White Bracton, and
was really appalled to find my letter to " H. Ander-
ton " still in the rack. Then for the first time I
realized that something had gone very wrong indeed.

hun S ***** for nearly an hour, waiting till the
passage should be empty and I could get hold of

igo THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

the letter, but they never gave me a chance ; so
I got tired of it and came on here.

' I had hoped to find the inn empty ; and it
was annoying when a strange lady came up and
talked to me. But I remembered that I was an
American, and it was therefore my duty to introduce
myself by name ; I picked it at random from a book
I'd been looking at. Then I found I'd put my
foot in it, because suddenly you walked in, and I
had to be presented to you. But you seemed to
have no suspicion at all. You must be a far better
actor than I am, because until yesterday evening
I hadn't the faintest idea that you suspected who
I was. I got reckless, and determined to see the
thing through. Among other things, I thought I'd
help to establish Derek's death. I had a card
which Derek had left on me ; I had a fiver of his,
which he'd given me when we were settling up our
hotel bills ; I put them into a note-case and planted
them out in the river for the scouts to find. Then
I thought it would be a good idea to worm myselt
into your confidence, so I planned out that Millmgton
Bridge affair, with the marks on the decanters.
You seemed to be drinking it all in.

' Aunt Alma's death was what altered the ook
of things. When you told me about the will, 1
realized what a silly position I'd put myself in
Here was all Aunt Alma's money going to that ass
Farris, unless Derek could be produced, and l
hadn't the faintest idea where Derek was ! bo 1
remembered the letter at White Bracton and 1
thought I'd try the cipher stunt. I posted the card
to myself at Paddington. I could have cried with

THE STORY NIGEL TOLD

delight when the visit to White Bracton worked
out so well. And then . . . well, there I was, and
here I am. Can I be prosecuted for a conspiracy
to defraud ? I suppose I can ; but it isn't worth
while unless you can find Derek alive ; and if you
do, why there's all Aunt Alma's money to pay off
our liabilities with. On the whole, I'm feeling more
comfortable than I've felt for a week.'

' M'm ! ' said Leyland, 'you've been conspiring
to defeat the ends of justice all right, by your
own account, but I'm hanged if I know whether
it's actionable. May I just ask whether you've
given us a complete list of your movements ? Or
whether we have to thank you for any more of the
little conundrums we've been trying to solve in
these last ten days ? '

' No, I think not. ... Oh yes, of course, there
was one thing I did, but not very important. When
I found the canoe, you know, and saw that it had
a hole dug in the bottom of it, it worried me a good
deal ; because Derek's disappearance was meant to
suggest accidental death. But this neat little hole
in the bottom of the boat suggested murder or
suicide or a game of some sort. Nobody could
think that was an accident. Then it occurred to
me that it might be taken for an accident if only
the edges of the hole weren't so confoundedly regular
Well, there was this chap who was with me, you
know, plunging about in the water like any old

boftnm rned K r T d the ed S es ^ the hole at the

caS H n 6 h ° Pe that U would l00k as if ^e
canoe had run aground and got smashed up that way/

i 9 2 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

*

1 Did you now ? ' said Bredon, his eyes burning.
1 And did you by any chance happen to make the
hole at all larger while you were about it ? 1

' Oh yes, lots. It was quite a little hole to start
with.'

Bredon got up and walked about the room with
his hands in his coat pockets, whistling.

CHAPTER XX

A RECONSTRUCTION

'0/ said Bredon as he and Leyland paddled
up, it seemed for the fiftieth time, to
Shipcote Lock. ' I don't find Nigel
Burtell's story incredible in the least. I was never
at a University, but I can quite understand how a
creature of poses like that might experience a sudden
revulsion just at the end of his time there. In a
small world it must be difficult for a self-conscious
person not to pose — not to wonder what people are
thinking of him and whether people are thinking
of him ; not to impose upon them a false person-
ality if his true personality is not worth imposing.
And to leave all that behind must engender a desire
to return to the simple emotions. But then, unfor-
tunately, murder is one of the simple emotions;
and I shouldn't be really surprised to hear that
Nigel had returned to that. He's so confoundedly
plausible, you see ; I wouldn't put it beyond him
to give us a perfectly genuine analysis of his emo-
tions, and then conceal from us the central fact.
And it remains certain that he's blown his own alibi
to bits. If there was only a hole about the size of
a pin s head in the bottom of that canoe, the wind
and the stream would carry it no end of a distance
beiore it filled up. And, dash it all, that's all there

10*

194 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

was. Why shouldn't the murder have been done
before the canoe left the iron bridge ? And if it
was, why shouldn't it have been Nigel that did it ? 1
' I know, I know. But then, you've always been
building such a lot on that argument. To me, the
whole thing has been a question of the total time
involved.'

' Well, we're going to find out all about that now.'

1 Yes ; and yet I'm not sure that all this recon-
struction business is really a fair test. You see,
you go about the business in cold blood, all gingered
up beforehand and quite certain what you're going
to do next. Interruptions and sudden after-
thoughts don't put you off your stroke. When
you undress by the bank, and dress again afterwards,
your stud won't lose itself in the grass, one sleeve
of your shirt won't pull itself inside out, because
you won't really be in a hurry, only pretending to
be in a hurry. To catch a train and do a murder
while you're about it in twenty minutes is all right
on paper, but when a man comes to do it he's bound
to lose his head. Look at those two photographs,
for example. I dare say you're right in thinking
that the one of the footsteps was only due to an
unintentional exposure of the film. But the one
of the body in the canoe is an admirable snapshot.
Well, you take photographs, don't you? Think
what a confounded lot of sprawling and squinting
and shifting one's feet about there is, before one
gets the beastly thing right. Could a man do all
that, when he was just catching a train, and it was
a matter of life and death to him ? That's my
trouble.'

A RECONSTRUCTION 195

' It's difficult, I grant you. I suppose there isn't
any other conceivable way in which that photograph
could have been taken ? No. . . . W;iit a
moment, though. ... I say, Leyland, you haven't
got that print I gave you in your pocket by any
chance, have you ? '

' Of course I have. We want to get the whole

setting of the thing exactly right. It's in my coat

pocket, up there in the bows, if you think you can

reach it without upsetting the canoe. Go gently,
now.'

Bredon retrieved the print, and looked at it
intently for a good half-minute. Then he passed
it back over his shoulder to Leyland, with the
question: 'Do you notice anything funny about
the shadows in that picture ? '

You mean. . . . Good Lord, what fools we've
been ! They go from left to right ! '

' With the picture facing North ... and the
time supposed to be nine in the morning. No it
won't do, will it ? I wonder we didn't think of that
before. We know they came back late in the after-
noon to cart the body away, and of course it was

then that they put it into the canoe and photo-
graphed it.

'That's all very well, but what about the fifth

su^eiv t C ^ ** **** the footsteps ? That was
surely taken in the morning, because it shows the

^ot steps I U Wet ' We know the footst eps were
< Ofc W i C , mornin g-Burgess swears to them.'

mn™l i °° tStepS Were P hoto ^phed in the
S J hi enou Sh- Otherwise the steps would
cast a shadow-they face East, you see. But then,

ig6 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

I've always believed that film was an accidental
exposure. If Nigel (say) was carrying the camera
when he walked up the steps, and his foot slipped
at the top, the exposure would be over and done
with in no time.'

' Yes, if it was accidental. But, now I come to
think of it, why shouldn't they have taken a photo-
graph of the footprints in the evening ? All they
had to do, don't you see, was to fake the footsteps
on the left-hand side of the bridge, instead of the
right. Then a photograph taken in the late after-
noon would look as if it had been taken in the early
morning.'

' Good for you, Leyland ! Only I'm hanged if I
see what they could have wanted to do it for. The
thing still works out all wrong, you know. Why
did these murderers want to leave traces about
which made it quite certain that the man had been
murdered ? What impression did they want to
create, which you and I are too stupid to see ?
Confound it all, they've overshot themselves rather
badly there. It seems to me just meaningless.'

1 Anyhow, we've cleared up one point. When
you give your little exhibition this morning there's
no need to take a camera with you. All you ve
got to do on your way to the train is to lift the body
out of the canoe the quickest way you can and lug
it up on to the clay bank. By the way^ what are
you going to do about a dummy body ? I'm hanged
if I'm going to understudy the corpse in that act.

' We'll have to raise something from Burgess. A
roll of carpet will do. Hullo ! here's the good old
island. You get out and take your photographs

A RECONSTRUCTION

197

while I paddle up to the lock and covet Mrs. Burgess'
best piece of drugget.'

Very carefully and methodically, Leyland took
six photographs of the trail through the bracken,
and two close-ups of the clay bank with the button-
impress. By the time he had finished, Brcdon had
returned with a substantial roll of oil-cloth, which
he deposited on the left-hand bank of the island.
A few minutes later they had taken possession of
the lock. Mr. Burgess, wondering but obedient,
was told to go on gardening, keeping a look-out
to make sure that all their operations were beyond
his range of vision. The lower gates of the lock
were opened, and Bredon, standing at the bottom
of the steps, gave a long, straight shove to the
canoe, which carried Leyland, stop-watch in hand,
briskly downstream. Bredon walked at a moderate
pace towards the weir bridge. The moment he
had crossed it, finding himself hidden from Mr.
largess observation, he ran at full speed some
Wrty yards along the bank, then sat down and
undressed to his bathing-suit. He lowered himself
without noise into the weir-stream, swam it. and
pushed h.s way recklessly through the undergrowth
at the southernmost end of the island. On the
ock-stream, Leyland was now floating very slowly ;
clear 'y ^ke him some time to reach the

v aL n f f that rate ' Bredon ran t0 th <= bridge,
walked backwards up the steps, swam up to the

ar fun <r, §ht 11 *u Sh ° re ' b0arded fc. and paddled

lifted 5""* the bridge - Here he landed ' and

devot J 7 ^ n ° ne t0 ° gently, on shore ; then
devoted himself to dragging the roll of oil-cloth up

198 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

to the middle of the island. Leyland, when he had
tethered the canoe, walked back to the lock, and
set out for the station on Mr. Burgess' bicycle,
along the field path. He had only waited a moment
or two when a rousing chorus of barks from Spin-
naker Farm announced that Bredon, his work done,
his clothes resumed, was hurrying up.

' Sorry, sir,' said Leyland gravely, as the panting
figure appeared round the corner ; ' the nine-
fourteen's just away. All the same, you did a
pretty good time. Twenty-five minutes, I make
it. You know, he might conceivably have caught
that train, if it was four or five minutes late. Did
you have any checks ? '

' Yes ; got one of my sleeves inside out. That's
the power of suggestion, confound you. And there
was a beast of a barbed wire gate I had to climb
over at the farm, which looked as if it ought to have
been unlocked. Confound it all, I never realized
what a hard time we let Nigel in for when we made
him scramble through bracken with bare shins.
He may have done it all, but he was a perfect fool
if he did.'

' Where you lost time,' said Leyland, ' was in
clambering up those steps. I calculated that you
might have saved three minutes if you'd swum out
to the canoe higher up and started paddling at
once. What the deuce did the man do it for, con-
sidering the waste of time ? Burgess can hardly
be lying about those footprints.'

1 1 believe I'm just beginning to understand that.
Look at it this way— the sixth photograph, we now
know, wasn't taken till the evening. Hitherto we

A RECONSTRUCTION iQ9

imagined that the footprints were left on the bridge
when Nigel (or somebody) went up to take the
photograph of Derek in the canoe. But the foot-
steps were there in the morning, and the photograph
wasn't taken till the evening. Then why were the
footprints there at all ? You saw me walking up
those steps backwards, and I must have looked a
fool as I did it ; certainly I felt a fool. It was, as
you say, sheer waste of time. Which makes me
suspect that the footprints were left there on
purpose, in order to create a certain impression.'

1 That's all very well, but it was a mere fluke that
Burgess went along and saw them. If he hadn't
happened to go just then, they'd have made no
impression on anyone, because nobody would have
seen them.'

, ' Precisely. And, don't you see, that's why it

was necessary to photograph them. The marks were
made in order that they might be photographed.
And the photograph was left about on purpose.
Now, what impression was it that the murderer
was trying to make ? '
' God knows.'

' So do I. The silly part about these footsteps
from the first is that they only went up one set of
stairs, instead of two, and that they only went
one way, instead of coming and going. That sug-
gested to us either that somebody in the canoe had
pulled himself up by his arms on to the bridge and
walked off it, or else that somebody had walked
4 U P the steps, backwards, and then jumped from
the bridge into the stream. Either notion is pretty
good nonsense, and therefore neither notion is the

200 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

impression which this rather acute criminal intended
to convey.'

1 Pity he didn't take more trouble to make his
impressions foolproof.'

' Don't you see why ? He thought that old
Burgess would go on rootling in his garden ; how
was it to be expected that he would suddenly start
hen-hunting in the wooded part of the island ?
Those footprints were not meant to be seen by Mr.
Burgess, or by any human eye.'

' Then why on earth '

' They weren't meant to be seen, but the photo-
graph was meant to be seen. Now, suppose Burgess
had never observed or reported the footprints, and
yet we had discovered the photograph, what should
we suppose about the footprints ? '

' I see what you mean. We should suppose that
they went right across the bridge, from one side
to the other, and along both sets of stairs. . . . Yes,
I see. They were meant to look like the footprints
of a man walking across, barefoot, from the Western
bank of the river to the island ? '

' Talk sense. If the man was walking that way,
and took the photograph as he did it, the film
wouldn't register any footprints, because the foot-
prints wouldn't have happened yet. You must
make your footprints first and photograph them
afterwards. No, the film was meant to look as if
it represented the tracks of a man walking back-
wards, from the island to the Western bank. In
fact, to suggest that the murderer was somebody
who went off afterwards in the direction of
By worth.'

A RECONSTRUCTION

« In other words, that he did not go off by river,
nor in the direction of Spinnaker Farm and the
station.'

' Exactly. Which recalls to us the interesting
fact that there was one person who certainly did
go off in the direction of the station, and that was
Nigel.'

' Hullo ! You are coming down on that side,
then ? '

' I didn't say so. But I'm not exactly taking
my eye off Nigel just yet, that's all.'

' Meanwhile, have you got a match ? '

'Just used my last. There's an automatic
machine on the other platform, though. We'll go
across and talk to it, and then get back.'

As they stood on the down platform there was
a rumble and a whistle from near by, and a desultory
porter showed signs of interest. A train puffed in
from the Oxford direction, with the self-importance
of one who is conscious that he is a rare visitor. A
single passenger got out, a tall, well-built young
man in a brown aquascutum winch half concealed
and half revealed the fact that he wore shorts under-
neath it. Confronted with the desultory porter,
he began an exhaustive search of his pockets, and
was rewarded at last by the discovery of his ticket ;
but not before a pink, perforated slip had fluttered
to the ground unregarded. Unregarded, I mean,
by the principals in the action ; Leyland and Bredon
exchanged an immediate glance, and the stranger's
back was hardly turned before they pounced upon it.

' This is too good to be true,' said Leyland as
they turned it over. ' It's quite, quite certainly

202 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

the one the man in the punt took at Eaton.
F.N. 2, as I live — the beastly number would have
been found written on my heart if we hadn't come
across this. Quick, what do we do ? '

' I'm going back to the canoe and upstream to
meet him. He can't be coming back to pick up
the punt. Look, he's gone off along the road—
towards Millington Bridge.'

' I'll follow, I think, and if he goes downstream
you can take me on board when we meet. Here,
take the bike. By Gad, this is the end of a perfect
day.'

CHAPTER XXI
A WALK IN THE DARK

BRED ON made no great pace up the river ;
he was exhausted by his twenty-live minutes
of variety performance at the lock, and there
was, besides, no need for haste. If the unknown
took his punt downstream at all— Leyland, in any
other contingency, would be able to keep close on
his tracks — he must needs reach Millington Bridge
before he could get a lodging for the night or a
high road to bring him back into touch with civil-
ization. And it would be easy work for Brcdon to
reach Millington first, in his lighter craft. Actually
when the bridge stood up before him, dark-outlined
against a cream and silver horizon of late sunset,
he saw a figure leaning over the parapet towards
him, and was hailed in Leyland's voice : ' Tie up
the canoe at the raft, and join me up here. I'm
on the look-out.'

Millington Bridge is not among those one-way-
traffic concerns in which our thrifty forefathers
delighted ; there is room to pass a lorry on it ; but,
by a kind of false analogy, it has a sharp angle over
each of its jutting piers in which the pedestrian
may take refuge from the dangers and the mud-
splashings of the road. It is easy to lean over the
parapet at these points, not nearly so easy to stop

203

204 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

doing it ; the leisurely flow of the stream beneath
laughs at the scruples which would forbid you to
spend another five minutes in doing nothing . . .
another ten minutes . . . another quarter of an
hour, so as to make it a round number by the clock.
To Leyland, and to Bredon, who now joined him,
no such scruples even presented themselves. The "
stranger, it appeared, was taking a quite easy
course down the river ; and Leyland had had
no difficulty in outwalking him. In a few more
minutes he was due ; meanwhile, there was nothing
to be done but watch the stream below them and
talk over their immediate plans.

It was one of those evenings when the clouds that
have ushered out the setting sun find relief (you
would say) after the formalities of that majestic
exit by chasing one another and playing leap-frog
across the clear expanse of sky. The sky itself
had passed from fiery gold to a silver gilt that
faded into silver ; and now the massed cloudscape
that had hung, in islands and capes and continents,
with bays and lagoons of fire between them, across
the Western horizon, broke up into grotesque
shapes which breasted the sky southwards — a
lizard, a plane-tree upside-down, a watering-can,
an old man waving a tankard. They moved along
in procession, like the droll pantomime targets of
the shooting-range at a country fair, cooling off
as they did so from crimson to deep purple, from
purple to slate-blue. The river, in the fading
light, had lost something of its companionableness,
but had taken on an austerer charm ; the patches
of light on it were less dazzling but more solemn,

A WALK IN THE DARK 205

the shadows had less of contrast but more of depth.
A silence had fallen on nature which made you
instinctively talk in a low voice, as if the fairies
were abroad. The willow-thicket that nestled
under the extreme right arch of the bridge, below
which they were standing, stirred and whispered
with the first presage of a breeze.

' He can't be long now,' said Leyland. ' When
he comes round the corner we can walk away slowly
towards the canoe— he'll hardly recognize us. What
I'm afraid of is that he may want to stop the night
here ; in that case I shall have to stop here, and
you, if you don't mind, ought to go back and hold
Nigel's hand for a bit. Do you mind making a
land journey of it ? I'd rather keep the canoe.'

' Not a bit. Good evening for a walk. But I
bet he doesn't stop here. He's still time to get
through Shipcote Lock, and it's all the better for
him if he can do it in the half-light.'

1 D'you mean he suspects that he's being trailed ? '
' At least he must know that he's walking into
danger.'

' I dare say you're right. Hang it all, why doesn't
he come ? If he goes straight on, we must follow
at a safe distance in the canoe.'

' What about the lock ? It'll give him a good
lead if Burgess has to fill up and let out again before
we can get through.'

' I've thought of that. You and I are going to
drag over the weir. That puts us ahead, of course ;
at the end of the weir stream, where it joins the lock-
stream, we'll go across on to the Byworth bank,
and lie up in those bushes till he comes past. We

206 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

can leave the canoe moored to the bank ; he won't
find anything suspicious about it. We still follow,
and then, of course, we can't exactly tell what
he'll do.'

' No. I take it, though, that he has no reason
for knowing that Inspector Leyland of the C.I.D.
has his headquarters at the Gudgeon Inn, Eaton
Bridge.'

' None that I know of. Perhaps fortunately for us.
Confound it all, what on earth is he waiting for ? '

They stood there perhaps five minutes longer,
and then, beyond the furthest fringe of the willows
to their left, a punt-pole, rising and dropping
rhythmically, betrayed the stranger's approach.
The watchers turned, with a single motion, and
walked slowly to the end of the bridge ; before
the flashing pole was out of sight downstream they
too had embarked, and were paddling noiselessly
in its wake.

It was the simplest piece of shadowing-work
conceivable. They had only to hug the shore and
keep a good look-out at the turns ; for the rest,
they were content to follow the conspicuous white
flash ahead of them ,i while they were concealed by
every tuft of rushes, every stretch of overhanging
bank. At any moment, with their superior mobility,
they could have made a spurt and overhauled the
fugitive. They had no wish and no need to over-
haul him ; it was enough to shepherd him along in
the direction of Eaton Bridge; there, surely, or
close by, he would be bound to spend the night
—it would be too late for him to demand the opening
of another lock. Was a hunt ever so effortless and

A WALK IN THE DARK 207

so noiseless ? They felt almost disappointed that
the course was not longer, so easy was the game,
so safe the quarry. The shadows fell thicker as
they went, the sky's colour died from silver to dark
blue ; lights came out in the rare farmsteads, and
the cattle in the fields showed only as indistinct

blotches of grey.

The negotiation of the lock at Shipcote needed
more care. They had to wait till the stranger was
well inside the lock, and even until the water itself
had begun to subside, before they could reach the
weir unobserved. But fortunately Mr. Burgess
was no hustler, especially in his mood of evening
repose ; meanwhile, the dragging of the canoe over
short grass and thistles was an easy task, and a
spurt down the weir-stream felt almost a relief
after their dawdling progress. Long before the -
punt had come in sight they had reached the end
of the island, crossed the reunited stream, moored
the canoe, and contrived to lie up in a willow-patch
only a few yards away from it. They waited a
little in silence, and then heard the dull ripple before
the punt's bows, the intermittent scrape of the
pole against its side.

The stranger, however, when he came in sight
of the moored canoe, did not seem so incurious
about it as Leyland had anticipated. He stood
for a moment or two with his pole poised, clearly
irresolute, perhaps even (in some mysterious way)
alarmed. He looked round him furtively ; then,
with a quick outward thrust, brought his punt
close in to the mooring-place. Leyland and Bredon
were both puzzled and disconcerted by the gesture.

2o8 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

To betray their presence would be inopportune,
and, to tell the truth, somewhat ridiculous : mean-
while, it hardly seemed probable that the stranger,
whatever interest he took in the boat's presence,
would be at the pains of towing it off with him.
But they had forgotten one possibility. With a
quick motion, still looking nervously around him,
the man caught up the two paddles that lay idle
in the canoe, deposited them in his own boat, and
with one vigorous shove started out again down-
stream.

A canoe without paddles is almost as helpless as
a dismasted ship. You may improvise substitute
instruments, but they will not carry you far or fast.
What had been only a breath at Millington Bridge
had now developed into a stiff breeze, and there
was no hope, even, of crossing the river and making
use of a practicable tow-path. To go back to
Shipcote Lock in search of a paddle would waste
precious time ; the loan of Mr. Burgess' bicycle
would have been a more happy solution, but Bredon
had unfortunately punctured it in riding back along
the field path from the station. All these con-
siderations occurred to the minds of the marooned
couple, and were rapidly discussed in terms which
it would be an affectation to print. Bredon sug-
gested that he might try swimming to the opposite
bank with the canoe in tow ; but the wind had set
in from the East, and they agreed that the attempt
would be time-taking, if not actually hopeless. In
fact, there was nothing for it but to follow along
their own bank, trusting to luck that they would
be able to make a forced march through the fields.

A WALK IN THE DARK

209

It was a hope which flattered them with fair
prospects, and then plunged them into embarrass-
ments. At first only the resistance of the standing
hay about their trouser-legs threatened them with
discomfort. But soon the hay gave place to bracken ,
rougher in its impact and more clinging in its
embraces ; in the gathering darkness, they stumbled
into holes and hidden runlets, or squelched pain-
fully through patches of bog. Then came barbed-
wire fences, and willow-fringed brooks with a
treacherous carpet of reeds ; hedges that delayed
you in a search for a stile, painful barriers of bur-
dock and thistle. All journeys seem long in the
dark ; the familiar distance between Shipcote and
Eaton Bridge had lengthened itself out into a
nightmare. Their feet were wet and slippery from

, the bogs they had blundered into, pricked by a
hundred thorns and hayseeds ; a mass of uncom-
fortable details, ridiculous in themselves, insignifi-
cant if you had had to face them in the daylight
and at your leisure, made a martyrdom of their
benighted journey. Fatigue and nerve-strain con-
jured up disquieting pictures which lodged obstin-
ately in the imagination — the stranger leaving his
punt at Eaton Bridge and motoring back to Oxford ;
the stranger pulling over the rollers at the next lock
unobserved ; the stranger slinking into the Gudgeon
and holding nefarious confabulations with Nigel,
his presumed accomplice. When they reached the
disused boat-house, they mistook its outline for

4 the Gudgeon ; when they reached the Gudgeon,
they were already wondering why the day had not
begun to break.

2io THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

All this time, naturally, they caught no glimpse
of the punt. They did not even pass any belated
river-goers who might have had news of its pro-
gress. They came back to the Gudgeon angry,
defeated, with no clear idea in their minds except
the sheer necessity of sitting down and having a
meal.

' You poor dears ! ' cried Angela as they came in.
' Supper's on the table, and has been for some time.
I've felt dreadfully like the deserted wife in the
comic papers, sitting up for hubby with the poker.
I told them to light a fire, by the way. Come right
inside.'

No, nobody had passed in a punt that she knew
of. No, it was not closing time yet ; in fact, there
were still a few people about in the bar. ' I may
say that I bought a whole bottle of whisky, in case
you should be too late. They looked at me with
considerable amazement. Nigel's asleep upstairs;
the doctor says he can get up a bit to-morrow.
Don't attempt to tell me what you've been doing
till you've had your supper.' They were, indeed,
hardly fit for the strain of conversation, and Angela
almost immediately seized upon the excuse of
' tucking up the baby ' to leave them in the enjoy-
ment of a bachelor tete-d-tete. It was only as he
looked down at the bottom of his second pint that
Leyland asked, ' Well, and what next ? I shall
curse myself all my life for not remembering to take
the paddles out of that canoe.'

' Confound it all, though, how on earth could we
expect him to know that he was being shadowed,
and that the canoe had got ahead of him ? That's

A WALK IN THE DARK

211

what I can't get over. If he's any sense, realizing
that he was being followed and not wanting to be
caught, he'll have left the punt somewhere close to
the bridge, and legged it for Oxford by road. Prob-
ably he was in time to catch the late 'bus, which
would mean getting to Oxford at a respectable
hour. If you feel up to it, of course, we might
take the car to Oxford and see if we can track him
through the 'bus people. It's almost incredible
that he should have had the effrontery to go on by
river.'

A door opened somewhere in the passage, and
for a moment they heard, from the bar, the voices
of agriculturalists raised in high debate — heard,
from the kitchen, the inevitable drone of wireless.
The door shut again, and there were uncertain steps
, in the passage, as of a man hesitating which way
he should turn. Then Angela was heard asking,
' Did you want anybody ? ' and an unknown voice
replied, ' I was wondering if I could see Inspector
Leyland. I'm sorry to bother him at such a time
of night, but it's really rather important. My
name's Farris (would you tell him ?), Edward
Farris.'

It was not likely that the bearer of such a name
would be kept waiting. Angela looked in, raised
her eyebrows, and held the door open for the new-
comer. Four eyes, still blinking after a long trudge
in the darkness, turned towards it, and saw, unmis-
takable on the threshold, the figure of the stranger
3 in the punt.

CHAPTER XXII

ANOTHER STORY

MR. EDWARD FARRIS, for all his vigorous
physique, somewhat recalled in his speech
and manner that legendary person who
was said to be ' descended from a long line of maiden
aunts' . His voice was carefully modulated, his
pronunciation meticulously exact ; he marshalled
his thoughts, without apparent effort, under head-
ings A, B and C ; he brushed cigarette-ash off his
trousers with irritating particularity. In a word,
you might have supposed from first impressions
that Mrs. Coolman had advertised for a lady's
companion and had got one.

1 My name must, I think, be familiar to you,' he
began, ' assuming, what I suppose I am right in
assuming, that your presence here is connected
with the recent doings of the Burtell family. Their
aunt, Mrs. Coolman, had been very good to me;
I was, to all intents and purposes, her adopted
child ; I had the melancholy privilege of being the
last person she saw on this side of the grave. Thank
you, yes, soda-water. Right up, please.

' I ought perhaps to explain that the Burtell
cousins were not personally known to me, except
in their extreme youth. Partly because they saw
very little of their aunt, partly because I felt that

212

ANOTHER STORY 213

they must regard me as something of an intruder
in the family. I knew them, however, by repu-
tation, and I could not but feel regret when, at
the very end of her life, Mrs. Coolman began to
take a fresh interest in them. However, it was
not for me to interfere. When she asked me what
character they bore, I did not like to particularize ;
but I said it was unfortunate they were on such
bad terms with each other. This, of course, was
common knowledge.

' Mrs. Coolman was of a somewhat masterful
disposition ; she liked to influence other people's
lives. She immediately determined that this
reproach must be removed from the family. I
wrote at her dictation — for her eyesight was failing
somewhat — a letter to her nephew Derek, less than
a month ago, urging him to effect a reconciliation.
He replied not long afterwards, in terms of what
I could not help regarding as somewhat insincere
affection. Nigel and he, he wrote, had decided to
bury the past ; they were on terms of frequent
communication ; and indeed, even as he wrote, he
was off for a tour up the river with his cousin
in a canoe. The tour had been recommended for
his health ; but he had no doubt it would prove
to be also a pleasure trip, with old Nigel in his
company.

' I am afraid that my manner on this occasion
must have betrayed a certain incredulity. Mrs.
Coolman, with the excitability of those who have
the misfortune to suffer from heart trouble, took
it amiss ; she asked me whether I really supposed
that Derek was telling a he ? Did I suggest that

2i 4 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

she should demand to see the lock tickets ? I
confess that I was a little put out on my own side.
I reminded her that a lock ticket does not specify
the number of persons present in the boat. " Very
well, then," she said (I cannot vouch for her exact
words), " you shall go and see for yourself. You
will hire a punt at Oxford in a few days' time and
go up to meet them. If you do not meet them,
or if you find on inquiry that they have not been
seen together, you shall come back and tell me."
I supposed at first that she was speaking in irony,
but discovered later on that she meant what she
said. To tell the truth, I think she had doubts
about her nephews' sincerity, and wished to make
sure of it on her own account ; meanwhile, she
screened this anxiety by a pretence that she only
did it to satisfy my scepticism. I trust that I am
making myself clear.

' Before I left, I found that this unfortunate
incident had made a great impression on her. She
told me that it was her intention to make a fresh
will, in which she would leave the bulk of her
property to her elder nephew. She implied, what
I had guessed but did not know for certain, that up
till then I had been her principal heir. You will
readily believe that I set out from Wallingford in
a distressed state of mind. Moreover, I felt that
my mission was uncomfortably ridiculous. What
an unenviable reputation I should earn, if by any
unforeseen chance the two Burtells should hear of
my presence on the river ! I determined to take
every precaution. I hired the punt under an
assumed name, that of Mr. Luke Wallace, to be

ANOTHER STORY

215

exact; and, to prevent gossip, I took my own
stores with me, resolving that I would not stay at
an inn till I was well past the track of the two
cousins. I have grave reason to fear that my
precautions were insufficient, and that one of them,
at least, has taken my interference in a very vindic-
tive spirit.

' Apart from this uneasiness, my tour was a
pleasant one. I enjoy living rough, and being
alone with nature. It was not till I had passed
Shipcote Lock— in fact, it was just above Ship-
cote Lock, that I passed the canoe with the two
cousins in it. I suppose it can only have been a
matter of a few hours before Derek's regrettable
disappearance.'-

' Excuse me, Mr. Farris,' broke in Leyland, * you

must see for yourself that your evidence may be

very valuable. Did you pass anybody else on the

way, either before or after the lock ? I need not

explain to you that there have been suspicions of
foul play.'

' Let me see ; I passed an encampment of boy
scouts lower do™ the river. After that, I do not
think that I noticed anybody until I saw the lock-
keeper. Then, immediately afterwards, I saw the
two BurteUs, and after that nobody, I think, until
MiUmgton Bridge.'

' That, I suppose, would be about half an hour
later ?

' Oh no, it would be an hour or two later. I had
luncheon there. Rather more than two hours if
anything. You see, it was a very hot morning,
ana 1 d made an early start ; and then, I had a

216 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

book with me I was rather interested in ; and so
I just sat there in the punt reading, close above
the lock.'

' M'm ! ' said Leyland ; 'it's a pity you didn't
select a spot just below the lock ; it would have
saved us all a lot of trouble. And then I suppose
you turned back home, as you'd finished your
errand ? '

' Why, no ; I wanted to make quite certain, you
see, while I was about it, that the two cousins had
really been together. I asked at Millington Bridge,
but the account the maid gave me there didn't
seem to suggest that they had been together much.
So I went on to an inn rather higher up, the Blue
Cow. I wanted to find out if anything was remem-
bered about the Burtells there. Besides, I had
arranged to go up that far, and my letters were
to be forwarded there by one of the servants at
Wallingford— under the assumed name, of course.
It was lucky that I had made these provisions,
because as it turned out it was at the Blue Cow that
I found with my letters a telegram, summoning me
back to poor Mrs. Coolman's death-bed. Well, of
course, I couldn't wait. I punted across the river,
stowed away the boat in the first suitable place I
could find, and then walked across country to Ship-
cote station, where I fortunately got a train.

' I'm afraid you are all thinking my explanation
very long-winded, but I want you to realize the
whole circumstances, for fear you should regard me
as fanciful. Before Mrs. Coolman died, on the
Wednesday, to be exact, she made a fresh will.
cu„ .vnioinoH i+c nrnvicinns to me herself. She

ANOTHER STORY 217

had left me a livelihood, but she had bequeathed
the bulk of her property to her elder great-nephew.
"Unless", she added, "I outlive him, and that
does not seem likely to happen now. The lawyer
made me put your name in too, in case Derek should
be unable to succeed." You may imagine my
feelings when she told me this ; it was all but
certain that Derek was dead, yet we had strict
orders from the doctor not to allude to the subject
in her presence.

'After her death, I was naturally detained by
business matters. But I had not forgotten the
punt, and it seemed to me that to continue my
interrupted journey by taking it back to Oxford
would be a way of recuperating from the strain of
the last few days. I took train this afternoon,
via Oxford, to Shipcote, and went back to the place
where I had left my punt.

' I expect you will think that my nerves have
been playing me false, but I could not get out of
my mind the picture of young Nigel. I had, I still
have, a strong suspicion that he made away with

nLTlr m ,° rder t0 SUCCeed as his heir And
on 1 TTv* t0 ^ that in a11 Probability only

d ai Sf x VeCn Nigd a freSh inhe " tancc

these 1J 7 °T 1 d ° n0t kn0W the l ™

would be T \ h . Ut J SUPP0SG that his bairns
would be the next to be considered. And if Nirel

's final

^me ? t ' St ' ck at committing another

idea at the Wv7 **. "^tand, a vague

an uncom-

2X8 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

fortable suspicion that I was being followed. More
than once, looking back, I thought that there was
somebody tracking my footsteps, and anxious not
to let me see that he was doing so. Even when
I had started downstream in the punt, I could not
shake off the suspicion. I quite clearly saw some one
on the bank behind me, and when we were just in
sight of Millington Bridge he passed ahead of me,
keeping well inland. I am certain that, as he passed,
he looked at me with no ordinary curiosity.

' I determined, perhaps foolishly, to repay him
in his own kind. I put the punt in to shore, landed,
and went very carefully along the bank, hiding as
far as possible behind the willows. When I reached
the bridge, I saw him leaning over it, as if he were
looking out for me. Very carefully I crossed the
road, and concealed myself under the extreme arch
of the bridge, which runs partly over dry ground.
In a moment or two I heard him in conversation
with a companion, and what they said assured me
that my worst fears were realized. They were on
my track ; they were in close touch with Nigel
and they had the intention of heading me on
somewhere below Shipcote Lock. But two encour-
aging points emerged from their conversation. One
was that they intended to go ashore at the end of
the lock-stream-why, I do not ^™~™ d ™™
their canoe moored. The other was that Inspector
Leyland of the C.I.D., whom they W^fJ*
mention with some awe, was staying at the Gudgeon

^fw^^pelied to go to the window and
clean out his pipe ; he was not certain of his own

ANOTHER STORY

219

gravity. Leyland, to his admiration, sat perfectly
unmoved.

' Well/ continued Farris, ' I hadn't the courage
to break my journey at Millington Bridge. I went
on down to Shipcote, and when I found their canoe
moored, I— I stole the paddles.' He chuckled a
little at the memory of his own cleverness. 1 Since
then I've seen nothing of the canoe. But they
may have followed me by land ; and I thought the
best thing I could do was to report the matter at
once to the police. I have a room booked here
for the night.'

'I see,' said Leyland. 'Oh Lord, tell him,
Bredon.' And they told him.

' Now that \ said Bredon next morning, * is as
straightforward a tale as I've ever heard told. You
can still go on suspecting him if you like ; I do
myself, rather. But I'm just going over to Oxford
to apply one more test to Master Nigel's perfor-
mances. Coming ? '

' Afraid not Too many darned suspects about

*S p * , mean t0 keep an e y e on tw>

bo it was Bredon alone who went over to Oxford,

kri J ' ^° Ugh amied Whh a note from
S* we !V nt0 Mr « Wickstead's well-known

t as c P ust a o nd dGma \ ded Mr. Nigel Burtell

-ord rr -; e wh Hi her ' if so ' they had «*

lUey brought out a portentous

220 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

volume, in which every client had a page devoted
to himself, a complete chiropodic dossier. There
was not a corn, it seemed, in any of the more exclu-
sive Colleges which was not on record here. True,
there was no absolute facsimile of the rising gener-
ation's footsteps ; but there was an outlined figure,
pencilled from the life, which gave the exact con-
formation, and whatever facts it did not divulge
were chronicled in the margin. A vast book,
alphabetically arranged, from which your name
never disappeared until you had paid off your bill
to Messrs. Wickstead, or given them any other
indication that you intended to take your custom
elsewhere.

Bredon turned the pages languidly, dawdling over
one name after another as if he were afraid of not
finding what he wanted when it came to the point.
He noticed his own surname, and wondered whether
he had some unsuspected relative in residence. At
last he reached ' Burtell and, mastering his excite-
ment, began to plough through the highly docu-
mented record. ' Something about a hammer-toe
here, I see,' he remarked.

'A hammer-toe? Oh dear me, no, sir; Mr.
Burtell's toes are perfectly straight ; you must be
reading the wrong side of the page. Allow me, sir
—there's "Shape of the toe"; nothing about
hammer-toes there, you see.'

' Yes, I see,' said Bredon. 1 Yes, confound it an,

I

CHAPTER XXIII

BREDON PLAYS PATIENCE AGAIN

"|XTOULD you be shocked', asked Nigel,
\/V/ *if you thought I'd done it ? '
T T He was sitting up, for the first time,
in a costume as nearly approaching full dress as
Leyland would permit. Angela sat opposite him,
knitting vaguely. Her attitude throughout his stay
in bed had been rather embarrassed, and he was
evidently determined to establish more normal
relations.

' I'm too old to be caught that way,' she said.
' You want me to say or imply that I don't think
you did it. You'd better ask me whether I'd be
shocked if I knew you'd done it. Because, after
all, it makes a lot of difference if you can give a
person the benefit of the doubt. As it is, I'm only
provisionally shocked, if you understand what I
mean.'

' But the idea of talking to a murderer does
shock you ? '

' Of course it does. If I read in the paper that
a total stranger has broken his neck I'm not shocked
—not really. But if my hair-dresser broke his
neck I should be shocked— why, I don't know.'

' But that's a different kind of shock.'

' I'm not so sure. I suppose very good people

221

222 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

when they come in personal contact with really
wicked people, do really disapprove of them morally.
But an ordinary humdrum person, like me, doesn't
really feel disapproval, only a sort of surprise.
You have to readjust your values, to realize that
the man you had tea with yesterday was the man
who robbed the bank; and it's that feeling of
surprise at the suddenness of the thing, to my mind,
that means being shocked.'

' Perhaps you're right. But, look here, would
you be shocked if I told you this— that I would
cheerfully have murdered my cousin at any time,
if I could have made quite sure of not being hanged
for it ? '

' Go steady. Don't say anything you don't want
to say. Remember that I chatter to my husband
continually, and I may pass on any remark you

111 < 1 1\C '

' Oh, that doesn't matter. Your husband, I'm
quite sure, thinks me capable of any crime, morally.
So does Ley land ; he'd put me in jug to-morrow
if he could see any way of explaining how I'd done
it So it doesn't matter what they think about
my character. Only I'd rather like to know what

you think about me.'

' I've told you ; I'm provisionally shocked. 1
shouldn't be shocked, though, merely by your saying
that you would do your cousin in for twopence,
because I shouldn't believe you meant what you
Sciid '

' But I do say it, and I do mean it. I don't think
a person like Derek has any right to exist, and 1
-w* cpp that it would have been wrong for me to

BREDON PLAYS PATIENCE AGAIN 223

put him out of the way. Selfish, of course I
should only have been doing it to gratify my own
feelings and my own pocket. But nut wrong,
because he'd no right to exist. A fellow like that
doesn't really qualify by any standard ; the parsons
couldn't approve of him, the State gets no earthly
good out of him ; and as for the aesthetic point of
view, he simply doesn't count. He neither enjoys
any of the higher pleasures nor helps anybody else
to enjoy them. He's no function. That's my
point.'

' Oh, but that's just what seems to me absolute
nonsense. Either everybody's life ought to be
respected or nobody's. It's absurd to suppose that
because you can appreciate Scriabin and Derek
couldn't, the man who murdered Derek was doing
something worse than if he'd killed you.'

'That's putting it rather personally. I'm not
quite sure that I've any right to exist either. I've
made a pretty good fool of myself, and I shall make a
worse fool of myself if I come in for any money as
the result of all this — you see if I don't.'

Nigel, like most people who fancy themselves as
rogues, rather liked to have good women talking
to him for his good. It enhanced your sense of
importance, to have people trying to reform you,
as long as they talked sympathetically and looked
nice. But Angela was adroit at refusing such
openings ; her common sense was admirably poised.
' Yes,' she admitted, ' I should think you'd make
a ghastly mess of it. I can imagine you doing a
frightful lot of harm. But I haven't put strychnine
in your Bovril for all that, and I'm not going to.

224 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

By the way, it's nearly time I gave you some—
Bovril, I mean.'

' Yes, but that would be for sentimental reasons,
wouldn't it ? I mean, you'd probably hate killing
a mouse. But you don't mind mice being killed.
So why should you mind Derek being killed ? Or
me, for that matter ? '

' I didn't say I would,' Angela reminded him.
' I only said I'd sooner not know the person who
did it, because I don't think he'd be a nice person
to know.'

' Then I can't be a nice person to know. Because
I'm the kind of person who would have killed Derek,
if I'd had the opportunity, and if somebody else
hadn't (apparently) got in before me.'

* Oh, I don't mind knowing people who think they
would have murdered Derek. Because, as I say,
I don't believe you are the kind of person who
would have. Unless, of course, you did.'

' Isn't that a tiny bit inconsistent ? '

' Not at all. Actions speak louder than words.
Tell me you did it, and I'll believe you. Tell me
you would have done it, and I won't believe you
because I don't think you know yourself. Of
course, it's different when one's excited ; but when
it comes to cold-blooded murder, why, I believe
we're all a little less unscrupulous than we think
we are.'

' All the same, where would have been the harm
in murdering Derek ? He's for it, anyhow ; you
can't go on drinking and doping like that without
doing yourself in. What's the good of his being
alive ? He's only keeping me out of fifty thousand.'

BREDON PLAYS PATIENCE AGAIN 225

'With which, as you say, you'd only make a
beast of yourself. No. it's all nonsense worrying
about the consequences of actions. The only thing
is to stick to the rules of the game ; and murder
isn't sticking to the rules; it's an unfair solution,
like cheating at patience.'

'Well, it's only speeding up the end. You'd
hardly argue, would you, that Derek was worth

keeping alive ? '

* Everybody's worth keeping alive— or rather,
very few people are worth it, but everybody's got
to be kept alive if it can be managed. Look at
you the other day— we all thought you were a
murderer, with nothing in front of you but the
gallows. And yet we rallied round with hot-
bottles and restoratives, and treated you as if you
were the Shah of Persia. No use to anybody,
particularly, but we had to do it, because one has
to stick to the rules. Once try to make exceptions,
and we shall all get into no end of a mess.'
' Blessed if I'd do it.'

' You would, though. If you were waiting behind
a bush to murder a man, and he fell into the river
on the way, you'd jump in and rescue him.'

' You try me. If it was Derek, I'd let him sink
and heave a brick after him.'

'No, you wouldn't. You mustn't keep on
contradicting, or I shall put you to bed and tell
you not to agitate yourself. Now, I'm going to
make your Bovril, if I can get at the bottle. I
left it next door, and my husband's in there playing
patience ; so it's quite possible I shall get shot out
head first.'

1

226 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

And indeed, she found her husband in no accom-
modating mood. ' I want a 'bus time-table,' he
said, retrieving a three of spades from the waste-
paper basket.

' Why not ring for one ? ' suggested Angela, with
an assumption of hauteur.

1 I've been wanting to for a long time, but I
can't get at that dashed bell without disturbing
the cards. Do be a sport and ask for one.'

' All right. Chuck over the Bovril, though.'
And she did contrive to secure a dog's-eared sheet
from downstairs, which he thumbed this way and
that abstractedly, while she watched him from the
doorway. ' Good ! ' he announced at last. ' Things
begin to clear up a bit. Tell the third chauffeur
to have the Rolls round this afternoon, because
we've got to make a little expedition to Witney.'

' We've lots of blankets at home, you know.'

1 Oh, go and feed Bovril to the patient. I'm busy.'

Bredon appeared at luncheon with symptoms of
suppressed excitement which Angela recognized and
welcomed. He was vivacious, and, in the presence
of Mr. Farris, he talked about everything rather
than the Burtell mystery. 'Anything fresh this
morning ? ' he asked, when he got Leyland alone.

' A little. Only a little, and dashed puzzling at
that. You remember Nigel told us that before all
this happened he had been on the point of going
off to the Continent. Well, that suggested to me
that he'd probably already got apassport, and it didn't
seem to me very safe to leave a passport in the
keeping of such a slippery young customer. So I
asked him about it, and he said he'd left it in his

BREDON PLAYS PATIENCE AGAIN 227

digs— told me exactly where I could find it. Appar-
ently there were some few of his personal possessions
that he'd left behind, to be picked up later. Well,
I went over and searched, and there wasn't a
confounded trace of the passport.'
« You think he was just lying ? '
' We could find out, of course, from the passport
office. But I don't think he was lying, because
though I didn't find the passport itself, I found
the odd copies of his passport photographs, one of
them authenticated by his College chaplain. It's
a mystery to me why the law always wants clergymen
to do these things, because of all professions I think
the parsons are the most careless about the way
they give testimonials. However, there they were ;
and indeed, here they are — have a look at them
if you like. I don't call it a very good portrait,
and it's rather blurred at that ; but these passport
people will take anything.'

' Yes, it's a dashed bad likeness, somehow. You
can see the family chin all right, though. By the
way, here's another point — who took that photo-
graph ? Because you were hunting all over the
place for a portrait of Nigel, and couldn't get one ;
I think you said you circularized the Oxford and
London photographers pretty thoroughly.'

' Oh, apparently it's an amateur one. Actually
it was done by Derek, before they started out on
the river tour. At least, so Nigel says.'

' But it can't have been immediately before.'
' No, it would be about a week before, when they
were arranging the trip together. Hullo, what's
wrong with you ? '

228 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' Only that I think I've picked up an extra link.
In fact, I'm pretty sure I have. Look here, Leyland,
are you coming over to Witney this afternoon ? '

' Not unless I'm wanted specially.'

' No, I don't think you'd be much use. Hullo,
here's Angela with the car. Look here, I may have
rather important things to tell you this evening, so
try to be on hand about tea-time.'

' Rather. Bring all your friends. We're becom-
ing quite a party here, aren't we ? '

' No, I shan't bring anybody. But if I'm right
—and I feel quite certain I'm right this time— I
shall have news for you which will set you tele-
graphing all over the place.'

' Another pub-crawl ? ' suggested Angela, as the
car turned the corner into the main road.

'Exactly. But there can't be many pubs in
Witney — decent ones, I mean.'

' Whose name do we ask for this time ? '

' No name, particularly. Just to find out if
anybody came there for the night on Sunday, the

Sunday before last.'

Their search was rewarded at the first and most
obvious hotel. For a wonder, the hotel register had
been kept, and it was not surprising to find that
only one guest had arrived on the Sunday. Angela,
looking over her husband's shoulder, read the
words ' L. Wallace, 41 Digby Road, Coventry '.

' Luke Wallace ! ' she cried, ' why, that's dear
old Farris ! Miles, this is bright of you. But why's
he gone and changed his address? He was in
Cricklewood last time. Miles, I'm hanged if I see
how you expected to find this.'

BREDON PLAYS PATIENCE AGAIN 229

' Oh, give a man time ! Is it possible you don't
see that I wasn't expecting it ? I don't want Luke
Wallace here one little bit. He spoils the whole
show. Farris ! What on earth was he doing here ?
And why on earth did he want a fresh address ?
I think I'm going mad.'

' So shall I, unless you tell me what it is you're
after. Do you know, I quite enjoy seeing you
puzzled, when you yourself are deliberately keeping
me on the rack like this.'

' The rack, the rack ! Luke Wallace on the
letter-rack! That's it, that does it all. Now, go
and ask that young creature in the cage what she
can remember about Mr. L. Wallace.'

But neither the lady in the cage nor the hotel
porter could remember much about Mr. Wallace.
He had attracted attention by arriving on a Sunday,
by arriving late at night, and by leaving early the
following morning. He had no heavy luggage with
him, but talked of having left some at Oxford.
He had inquired about the trains to Oxford, and
had taken the earliest on Monday morning. Nothing
more was known.

At the Gudgeon, they found Leyland writing up
his diary at a table by the window, while Mr.
Farris, in an uncomfortable rush-bottomed chair,
was reading the local directory. ' Well,' said
Bredon cheerfully, ' it's up to you now. Angela's
going upstairs to ask Nigel a few questions ; when
I know the answer to those, I shall be able to leave
the whole business in your hands.'

' What exactly do you want me to do ? ' asked
Leyland.

230 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

' Why, get on to the Continental police, and ask
them to obtain all the information they can about
the movements of a traveller who crossed the
Channel about ten days ago, giving the name of
Mr. Luke Wallace.'

Leyland gave one anguished glance in the direc-
tion of Mr. Farris, imagining that Bredon had not
noticed him. Farris himself sprang to his feet with
a look of utter bewilderment. ' The Channel ?
The Continent ? But I assure you I haven't left
England since Christmas ! Really, Mr. Bredon '

' It's all right ; nothing to do with you. Except
that, apparently, somebody's been borrowing your
alias. That can hardly be described as imperson-
ation, though of course it's open to you to regard
it as a breach of copyright. But I shouldn't use
that alias any more, if I were you, because the
gentleman who borrowed it will, before long, be
much in the mouths of the police.'

'That's all very well,' objected Leyland, 'but
surely the fellow will have had the sense to take a
fresh alias when he got across to the other side.
Why stick to the old name, when he can always

invent a new one ? '

' He might do that, of course. But he's been
at such pains to identify himself, for a particular
object, as Mr. Luke Wallace, that I have a strong
suspicion he will stick to the name. You see, he
thinks that the identification will put us off the

scent.'

' And the real name ? '

• Is, of course, Derek BurteU.'

CHAPTER XXIV

BACKED BOTH WAYS

NGELA came in before anybody had time

to add further comment. ' Fiance, Bel-

gium,' she said. ' A good way up the
river, near Ditcham Martin, just after breakfast.
Yes, each took three of the other — Derek's sug-
gestion.'

' That settles it,' said Bredon. ' Leyland, I
really think you might return Nigel his trousers.
All the same, we won't ask him downstairs just
now, because I may be taking his name in vain a

' Derek Burtell ! ' said Leyland in a stupefied
way. ' How long have you been on his track ? '

' Only since yesterday. I thought it all out this
morning. But, of course, we ought to have recog-
nized it was either he or somebody like him who
was responsible for all this mystery-making.'

' Somebody like him ? How, like him ? '

' Somebody who took drugs. Don't you see,
this whole business has puzzled us from the first
because there were signs of extraordinary cunning
at work, and yet it didn't figure out right. It
didn't give us a wrong impression, as it was obviously
meant to ; it simply gave us no impression at all.
It was fantastic, like a dream. And that was

231

bit.*

232 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

because it was a dream, really — an opium dream,
only carried out in real life.

' Derek, as we know, was a quite unimaginative
person. But Derek was taking the stuff in large
quantities ; and whatever else is certain about the
effects of drug-taking, it's certain that it turns
people into champion liars. Derek, in an ordinary
way, was too stupid to lie, or at least to lie cleverly.
But the drug let him out. They say every man
has one good story in him ; and Derek has produced
one story, not by writing it but by acting it. I
don't think it would ever have formed itself properly
in his imagination if it hadn't come to him in those
moments of exaltation when the drug-taker sees
clearly and imagines without effort. Like Kubla
Khan, you know. Only this time there was no
gentleman from Porlock to interfere, and the dream
was realized. The outline was a framework of
splendid deception; the details were untidily
managed, because Derek hadn't got the drug in
him when he arranged them.

' Derek Burtell hated his cousin. We know that,
and we know why. But his hatred took something
like a moral form ; he at any rate believed that
his cousin was as good as a murderer, because he
was responsible for that woman's death. He didn t
want to kill Nigel : he wanted Nigel to be executed
by the laws of his country. Since Nigel couldn t
be punished for the murder he had done, he should
be punished for a murder he hadn't done_ He
should be punished for murdering Derek, and Derek
would disappear in circumstances which would make
evervbodv think he was murdered.'

BACKED BOTH WAYS 233

1 One moment, Miles,' said Angela. ' Did Derek
mean to give up his fifty thousand altogether ?
Because if Nigel had been hanged, the legacy would
never have been available.'

' My impression is that he was backing himself
both ways. If Nigel were hanged, well and good ;
he would sooner have his vengeance than any
amount of legacies. But if Nigel escaped suspicion,
the other plan would hold : Nigel would come in
for the legacy, Derek would get into communication
with him, and they would split the proceeds.
Derek took his cousin fully into his confidence up
to a point. Beyond that point he kept him in the
dark. And I suppose he never dreamed that
Nigel would have the face to tell that story he told
us yesterday morning, or that he would be believed
if he did. It would be supposed that Nigel was
just inventing the tale of the bargain, to save his
own skin. I believe you did think that, Leyland.'

' I'm still waiting to be told why I'm not to
think so.'

' Because of Mr. Luke Wallace's visit to Witney.
We shall come to that. What I want you to take
on trust for the moment is that everything Nigel
has told us about his movements on that Sunday
and that Monday is strictly true. The things he
didn't tell us were things he didn't know.

' Derek's difficulty was this— he didn't want to
commit suicide ; not so much because he cared
about his life, as because he didn't want his cousin
to get the legacy. He had, therefore, to create the
impression that he was dead, with Nigel's compli-
city ; he had also, without Nigel's complicity, to

234 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

create the impression that he had been murdered.
What steps he took to create the impression that
he was dead, Nigel has already told us. They
weren't very clever ones ; they were, I take it,
the invention of Derek in his normal state. To
disappear and leave a canoe floating about on a
river, to lie low until your death is presumed, to
start again in the Colonies under a fresh name— all
that is a sufficiently clumsy idea, and a hundred
accidents might have upset the plan. But the
steps he took to create the impression that he had
been murdered were, at least in their outline, very
ingenious ; I give them full marks for ingenuity.
They were Derek Burtell's Kubla Khan. Tell me,
Leyland, why have you and I assumed up till now
that it was a murder ? '

'Because it seemed certain that some human
being had been with Derek after the moment when
Burgess lost sight of him at the lock.'

' Exactly. And what is our evidence that Derek
Burtell was not alone during all that time ? '

'The photograph; or rather the two photo-
graphs. No, a man can take a snapshot of his
own footprints. But he can't take a photograph
of his own body lying stretched full-length in a
canoe. Don't tell me he did it by some arrangement
of strings, because I won't believe it.'

' No, that's what's been at the back of our minds
all the time, imposing on us the idea of murder,
or at least foul play. But what if the figure in
the canoe was not really Derek's, but somebody
else's ? The hat, remember, was drawn over tne
face.'

BACKED BOTH WAYS 235

' But the chin was Derek's.'

'It was a Burtell chin. But are you sure it
was Derek's, and not Nigel's ? '

' But, hang it all, that doesn't make things any
clearer.' He couldn't photograph Nigel if Nigel
wasn't there. And if Nigel was there, Derek wasn't
alone.'

•Yes, I ought to explain, I suppose, that the
photograph of Nigel was taken by Derek much
higher up the river, near a place called Ditcham
Martin. There is a light bridge over the river there,
very much like the one at Shipcote Lock ; it's a
common type, you know, except for the cement
steps. Derek persuaded his cousin to take some
of the drug, just to try it ; you remember Nigel
told us that it "laid him out ". It did lay him
out, on the floor of the canoe. Derek got on shore,
let the canoe drift, and hopped up on to the bridge
with the camera. The next film to be exposed was
Number Three; Derek didn't expose that, nor
Number Four, nor Number Five. He turned the
spool on to Number Six, and with Number Six he
took a snapshot of his cousin as he floated under
the bridge. Then he turned the spool back again to
Number Three ; not difficult to do, though of
course he must have had to get a darkened room
to do it in.'

' And this happened, I suppose, in the evening ?
That's why the shadows went from left to right
instead of right to left.'
i ' No, that's the funny thing. Derek was careful

to take his photograph at the right time of day,
soon after breakfast. But he'd forgotten that on

236 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

that particular bend the river is flowing South, or
nearly South ; you can see it on the map here.
So that was that. Long before the cousins reached
Millington Bridge, the sixth film contained damning
evidence of Derek's murder— at least, Derek thought
so.

' Now we can take the story in its historical order.
At the Blue Cow, a little above Millington Bridge,
Derek suggested to Nigel that idea that they should
sleep in separate places. Derek himself would put
up at White Bracton, a mile or so from Millington
Bridge, while Nigel came to the hotel at Millington
Bridge twice over, and so created the impression
that they both slept there. Thus, at White Bracton,
the useful Mr. Anderton would come into existence ;
he was to be Derek's future alias. Only, without
telling his cousin, Derek altered the plan. He
caught a late 'bus, and went all the way on to
Witney. Nor, at Witney, did he give the name of
H. Anderton. He gave the first name that came
into his head — his imagination, you see, had broken
down ; and that was the name " Luke Wallace ",
which he had seen on a packet of letters in the letter-
rack at the Blue Cow. Observe that Derek had
now got a new name and a new address, of which,
Nigel could suspect nothing.

' By 'bus, or perhaps by an early train, he reached
Millington Bridge in good time on Monday morning.
He pretended that he had slept at White Bracton,
but not very well ; he pretended, therefore, that
he was sleepy, and appeared to doze of! on the floor
of the canoe. In fact, he was pretending to be
already a corpse. You, Mr. Farris, could not have

BACKED BOTH WAYS

237

sworn in a court of law, could you, that both pas-
sengers in the canoe were alive ? '

1 Quite certainly not. To tell the truth, it gave
me a slight shock when I saw Derek lying so motion-
less. But then I remembered that he was said to
be addicted to drugs, and thought that explained
it.'

' I see. Nor did Burgess at the lock see Derek
move, or hear him speak. He did speak to Nigel
from the canoe ; but by that time the water had
sunk low, and the lock walls prevented any sound
reaching Burgess' ears. In a court of law, Burgess
would have had to depose that he had heard Nigel
speaking to Derek, but not Derek speaking to
Nigel. When inquiries came to be made, nobody
would be able to swear to having seen Derek alive
on the Monday. If those inquiries were very
carefully made, it would also be seen that there
was no real evidence of Derek's having slept at
MiUington Bridge. The trick by which Nigel pre-
tended to be two people would have been discovered,
and it would have looked black against Nigel. It
would have looked as if he had been ingeniously
concealing his cousin's death.'

' Do you know,' said Angela, * I believe I prefer
Nigel to Derek.'

'Well, it was Derek doped; so perhaps we
oughtn't to be too hard on him. At the lock,
Nigel acted precisely as he told us the other day ;
and, on Derek's suggestion throughout, he acted
precisely like a man who is interested in establishing
an alibi. He went out of his way by Spinnaker
*arm ; he asked questions about the time, and so

238 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

on. Meanwhile, Derek had given the canoe one
shove to get it out of the lock, and lay doggo until
he heard Burgess walk away. Now was his time
to finish his preparations.

1 Film Number Five on the spool had not been
exposed. Something must be done with it, and it
was an opportunity for doing something ingenious.
Nigel was quite truthful when he told me that his
cousin was fond of trick photography. He took,
on Number Five, what appeared to be an accidental
exposure, but was really a deliberate snapshot of
his own footprints on the bridge — footprints which
he had deliberately made, in order to suggest that
somebody had been standing on the bridge with
bare feet to photograph the corpse. What precise
inference he meant us to draw from the footprints
I don't know. He certainly didn't expect that
Burgess would come along and see the footprints
themselves. But there was one thing he had to
be careful about. Derek Bur tell had hammer-
toes ; Nigel hadn't. And, oddly enough, it was
in looking to see whether Nigel had that I found
out about Derek. Their foot-statistics were close
together at Wickstead's, on opposite sides of the
same page. That was when I really cottoned on
to its being Derek who worked the whole plant.
So Derek only left the marks of his heels and insteps.

« He paddled down a short way, and then left,
on the bank, those traces which you and I, Leyland,
investigated so credulously. He wormed himself
along on his back through the bracken, careful to
make dragging marks with his boots. He lay flat
op the clay bank, taking good care that one button

BACKED BOTH WAYS

239

should leave its impress. He paddled round the
end of the island into the weir-stream, driving his
canoe hard into the bank so as to make a mark.
He made a single track, walking, between the
weir-stream and the chy bank. He crossed the
weir-stream, and left the iilm lying about for some-
body to find. I forgot to say that he had already
dropped his note-case in the lock-stream, so as to
look as if it had fallen out when his corpse was
lugged ashore. In fact, I think he meant to create
the exact impression which the various clues did
create, Leyland, on you and me.'

' Yes. I'm going to meet Mr. Derek Burtell, if
I have to search every doss-house on the Continent
of Europe.'

' Then he paddled across the main stream to the
Byworth bank. Before he turned the canoe adrift
he managed, probably with one of those composite
pen-knives, to dig a tiny hole in the bottom of the
canoe. That, of course, was perfectly inconsistent
with his main plan ; in the given circumstances,
the supposed murderer would have been a fool to
do anything of the kind. What he calculated on,
I suppose, was that the hole in the canoe would
immediately produce in everybody's mind the
impression of foul play— as indeed it would have,
if Nigel hadn't doctored the hole when he found it.
Derek himself went off in the Byworth direction,
leaving the impression that he had been murdered
by Nigel at Millington Bridge or above it, ferried
down next morning to Shipcote, photographed from
the bridge and lugged ashore at the island, retrieved
somehow and smuggled away later in the day. It

2 4 o THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

was a fantastic impression ; but then, as I say,
this wasn't a deep plot laid by a cunning schemer ;
it was an opium-dream.

1 1 dare say he had actually left some luggage at
Oxford, but that won't help us, for we don't know
under what name it was left. In any case he must
have taken train at Oxford, I suspect for South-
ampton. That meant crawling across country by
Didcot and Newbury, instead of risking the possi-
bility of a recognition in London. And there, I
suppose, he would take ship to Havre.'

' And his passport ? ' asked Leyland. ' You
mean that he '

1 Yes, he'd provided himself with a passport,
rather ingeniously. When he went up to make
plans with Nigel, Nigel was just getting a passport,
and he wanted an amateur photograph of himself.
He asked Derek to do it, and Derek, foreseeing his
own need of a passport, took three photographs of
Nigel, and got Nigel to take three of himself, in
exactly the same pose, on the same plates. (Nigel,
of course, didn't realize this.) It was only one
chance in a thousand, but one of the films did come
out, as you can see, a perfect composite photograph.
The photograph was sufficiently like Nigel to deceive
the College chaplain. It was sufficiently like Derek
to deceive the passport authorities at Havre. It
was with that passport, then, that he got away.
Of course, this was long before any hue and cry
had been made over either cousin. What he's done
since I don't know, but as the passport is visa'd
for France and Belgium, I suppose he's in one or
the other. Perhaps, if you circulate the news about

BACKED BOTH WAYS

241

Mrs. Coolman's will, Derek will reappear of his
own accord. If not, I suggest a complete inquiry
into the whereabouts of Mr. Wallace. I don't
suppose he will have been using another alias all
the time, because he obviously meant to trade on
the previous history of Mr. L. Wallace. If anybody
suspects that L. Wallace is Derek Burtell, they
will be silenced, he thinks, when they learn that
L. Wallace stayed at Witney on the Sunday night
when Derek Burtell was safely tucked up at Milling-
ton Bridge. Remember, though, he's been brought
up in France ; so he may by now be posing as a
native.'

' We'll find him all right,' said Leyland grimly.
'If I can get leave, I'll go after him myself.'

' Go steady with your revolver, then. The Com-
pany won't like it a bit if he's a corpse by the
third of September.'

CHAPTER XXV
A POSTSCRIPT

September 6th.

EAR MRS. BREDON,

' It was very kind of you to write and
ask after me, and I hope it wasn't mere
curiosity that prompted you to do it, as you suggest.
I've been here, of course, in this rather delightful
Belgian country town, ever since the police got
news that Derek was here — the result, somebody
told me, of a wireless broadcast. Anyhow, it
seemed only decent to come out and see that he
was being looked after. Though that, indeed, was
quite unnecessary, because the nuns have made
him comfortable all the time, as far as he could

be made confortable.

'To answer your question — yes, I think your
husband was exactly right in every particular.
One or two explanations have been forthcoming,
e.g. why Derek left me so little time to commit
my imaginary murder in. It turns out that I was
to blame for this, because I took so much longer
getting away from Millington Bridge than I was
expected to. As he had worked the thing out, we
ought to have arrived at Shipcote with a clear
half-hour or more for me to catch the train in.
As it was, I started out late from the inn ; and

242

A POSTSCRIPT

243

Derek, though he was annoyed by the delay,
couldn't oiler to help me with the paddling, because
it was part of his plan to appear very tired and
sleepy. If we had been more punctual, my "alibi "
would have been singularly imperfect. But then
if we'd been more punctual Derek would have
passed Farris in the lock stream, and that would
have complicated things all round.

'The footprints on the bridge had, after all, a
certain raison d'etre. Derek meant it to be sup-
posed that I meant it to be supposed that the
murderer had come from Byworth, and had made
off in the Byworth direction ; that he walked back-
wards as a piece of obvious bluff which the police
would see through. (Only a dope-fiend, I imagine,
could have worked out that idea of triple bluff, and
expected the police to follow two-thirds of the
calculation.) You were expected to think that the
films dropped from my pocket on the Shipcote
bank by accident.

' There's nothing more, I think, for me to clear
up except Derek's movements after he left the
river. He did, of course, go via Southampton and
Havre, and he travelled straight on to Paris. There
he took refuge in a class of society where no ques-
tions are asked and shaving is optional. He started
growing a moustache and beard, and was listening
eagerly for news of my arrest. But when that
didn't happen, and the papers still refused to
recognize his death, he left Paris and came here,
dropping the name of Wallace as he did so. He
had started taking drugs again, and soon after he
got here he fainted in the street. He was brought

244 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

to this hospital, where the nuns had never heard
the name of Burtell ; and he was too sick to read
the newspapers at the time when Aunt Alma died.
In fact, he knew nothing more of what was going
on here until the police tracked him down.

' There's one other circumstance about Derek
which may not interest you, but interested me
profoundly. He was engaged to some French girl,
who proceeded to turn up at his bedside as soon
as she heard of his whereabouts, and I'm blessed
if they didn't get married. Which was all very
proper and romantic ; but it had the awkward
consequence that D. drew up a will in favour of
his wife, which he calmly asked me to witness ! So
Aunt Alma's legacy will not come into my branch
of the family.

1 However, what I wanted to tell you about was
my first interview with Derek. It was almost
immediately after I got here ; he insisted on seeing
me alone; and, though I dreaded the interview,
I had to go through with it. He was frightfully
broken down, poor chap, whimpering all the time
and very nearly crying. He grovelled quite dread-
fully about his attempt to let me in for a murder
charge ; said that he'd been made silly by drugs,
and wasn't really responsible for his actions. He
said he didn't think he'd really have let me swing
—which I didn't believe. And I had to sit there
like a fool, saying " Oh, shut up ; don't mention
it and that sort of thing ; and all the time I
could see that he was leading up to something— I
couldn't make out what.

'At last it came. They had cut him off, of

A POSTSCRIPT 245

course, from his drug, and lie was simply dying to
get some. There was some, apparently, hidden
away in his luggage, and he hadn't dared to ask
the doctor for it, or any of the nuns. He wanted
me to fetch it and give it him. I said, of course,
that he was far better without it ; that he'd only
kill himself if he took more. He said he didn't
mind ; he was for it anyhow ; what difference could
a week or two make ? I was still arguing about it
when the nurse came in and turned me out ; said
I mustn't tire him by talking to him any longer.
I went straight to Derek's luggage, and found the
dope just where he'd told me. I put it into my
pocket, and went out for a little walk by myself.

' What Derek said was perfectly true, and I knew
it better than he did. The doctor had told me
that the poor chap hadn't an earthly chance. He
wasn't a bit interested in life, and I honestly think
he'd sooner have poisoned himself with a last dose
or two than flickered out gradually. A streak of
good-fellowship in my nature kept on urging me
to let him have the stuff. At the same time. I
knew that it would kill him off-the doctor had
warned me of that ; and as there was still three
weeks or so to run before he turned twenty-five
that would mean that grandpapa's fifty thousand
came into my pocket, where it was needed, instead
of being handed over to a beastly Insurance Com-
pany which wouldn't even say thank you for it

I leant over a bridge across the river ; and'all
£ time my mind was back at the Gudgeon, with

toS?* 2" Streaming ^ - d *2
motors buzzing over Eaton Bridge, and that fool

246 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

peacock on the lawn. I remembered exactly how
you said that if I were waiting to murder a man and
he fell into the river, I should find myself jumping in
to rescue him. I remember what you said about
sticking to the rules of the game, because it was
the only thing to do. And I remembered how I'd
protested, and sworn that I'd do nothing of the
kind ; and how old-fashioned I thought you. Well,
here I was, in very much the required position.
Here was a man I'd always hated, and I couldn't
summon up any respect for him even on his death-
bed. He'd been spreading himself, only a fortnight
or so before, in an attempt to get me hanged on a
false charge of murder. It wasn't a question of
killing him ; it was only a question of providing
him, at his own earnest demand, with a kind of
drug which had come to be necessary to his happi-
ness but which, quite incidentally, would kill him
if he' took it. It was a kind of Philip Sidney touch ;
and my reward for it would be fifty thousand down
—fifty thousand which poor old grandpapa never
meant to go out of the family.

< And the awful thing was that I found you were
richt. It wasn't that your wishes in the matter
had any influence with me ; you hadn't expressed
a wish, you'd only made a prophecy. And all my
conscious reaction on that was an intense desire
to prove you wrong ; to be able to write and teU
you that you were wrong. And yet I couldn t do
it • some curious inhibition stood in my way. «
can hardly have been a moral scruple, for I don
remember having any these last four or five yea^
It wasn't the fear of being found out, because

A POSTSCRIPT

247

Derek was in such a dicky state anyhow that
nobody would have been surprised at his pegging
out any time. It was just an absurd something.
There was nothing for it but to stick to the rules
—leave it to chance whether Derek lived till his
birthday or not. My hand (not my mind, not my
will) dropped the packet very deliberately into the
river.

' Next day this French girl turned up, and that
seemed to brace Derek a bit ; the doctor admitted
that it was a slight rally, but said there was still
no hope. The days dragged on, and by the night
of September the second I found myself in a curious
state of equilibrium. I wasn't wanting Derek to
die, or wanting him to live. I wasn't even person-
al^ interested, so it seemed to me, in the question
whether he lived or died. I was simply a detached
spectator, with only a spectator's excitement about
the game Fate was playing with Derek and with

got up I ound there was a priest buzzing round
wbch made me think for a moment that it was a i

hi wV} ; Derek died ab °ut ten "dock

on h, birthday morning, looking ridiculously happy

in me h f ' C 5f Bted ; and if tha * was virtue

out fnll^Sl^l?^ a j ° b f0r me
the bottom ' t'L diJf Ch mCanS " Startin S at
So I am go J J fl d,sc ° ura ? n g modern phrase.

The EuTop § ean g cr L **' ^ uirk after

if we eve! m JT • ° f ***** simplicity ;
ever meet again (which is improbable

248 THE FOOTSTEPS AT THE LOCK

you will find me explaining to you that two and
two makes four on the other side.

' Don't for the Lord's sake condole with me, or
congratulate me. The thing had got to happen ;
it has happened ; and I'm glad I didn't interfere.

' Yours kindly,

9 NIGEL BURTELL '

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